Although previously undervalued for their strategic impact because the represented only a small percentage of total forces, the Union and Confederate navies were crucial to the outcome of the Civil War. In War on the Waters, James M. McPherson has crafted an enlightening, at times harrowing, and ultimately thrilling account of the war's naval campaigns and their military leaders. McPherson recounts how the Union navy's blockade of the Confederate coast, leaky as a sieve in the war's early months, became increasingly effective as it choked off vital imports and exports. Meanwhile, the Confederate navy, dwarfed by its giant adversary, demonstrated daring and military innovation. Commerce raiders sank Union ships and drove the American merchant marine from the high seas. Southern ironclads sent several Union warships to the bottom, naval mines sank many more, and the Confederates deployed the world's first submarine to sink an enemy vessel. But in the end, it was the Union navy that won some of the war's most important strategic victoriesas an essential partner to the army on the ground at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Mobile Bay, and Fort Fisher, and all by itself at Port Royal, Fort Henry, New Orleans, and Memphis.
James M. McPherson taught U.S. history at Princeton University for forty-two years and is author of more than a dozen books on the era of the Civil War. His books have won a Pulitzer Prize and two Lincoln Prizes.
Hometown:
Princeton, New Jersey
Date of Birth:
October 11, 1936
Place of Birth:
Valley City, North Dakota
Education:
B.A., Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, MN) 1958; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, 1963
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1 Mobilizing for War 15
2 Establishing the Blockade 47
3 We've Got New Orleans 79
4 The River War in 1861-1862 111
5 The Confederacy Strikes Back 153
6 Nothing but Disaster 189
7 A Most Signal Defeat 218
8 Unvexed to the Sea 249
9 Ironclads, Torpedoes, and Salt, 1863-1864 276
10 From the Red River to Cherbourg 304
11 Damn the Torpedoes 337
Conclusion 365
Acknowledgments 369
Notes 373
Bibliography 415
What People are Saying About This
From the Publisher
Wonderfully written and researched. . . . Balanced, objective, and highly readable.Howard Jones, University of Alabama
James McPherson's many admirers in the Civil War community will be thrilled that he has turned his keen eye and eloquent pen to the naval war. In this new, concise history of the war at sea, McPherson not only tells an important story well, he shows how the Union Navy, with only five percent of Union military assets, had a disproportionate impact on the war.Craig L. Symonds, author of Lincoln and His Admirals
With all the narrative grace, original scholarship, and equal grasp of both big picture and telling detail, Civil War historian nonpareil James McPherson has provided his admirers with another authoritative entry in his roster of essential books. McPherson never argues that the Union Navy won the Civil War, but readers will argue that no Civil War library will ever be complete without this volume.Harold Holzer, Chairman, Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation