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BOOK REVIEWS Ironclad Captain: Seth Ledyard Phelps and the U.S. Navy 1841-1864. By Jay Slagle. Foreword by Edwin C. Bearss. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1996. Pp. xviii, 449. $35.00.) This is a first-rate work and a welcome addition to the literature on the Civil War in the western theater. It is a compelling biography of a relatively young naval officer who commanded a variety of gunboats on the Mississippi River system from 1862 to 1864. But it is also a vivid narrative account of the U.S. Navy's overall role on the western waters—indeed, the best such account to be published in over forty years. Because Seth Phelps left behind a particularly rich archive of private letters, it is possible for Jay Slagle, who is a direct descendent, to allow Phelps to tell the tale largely in Phelps's own words. In recognition of this, Slagle writes in the preface that "This story is an autobiography" (xv). While such a statement does indeed acknowledge the extent to which Phelps is allowed his own voice in the narrative, it is also overly modest, for both Phelps and Slagle write very well, and Slagle knows when to allow Phelps to speak and when to take over the narrative himself to move it along or to provide valuable context. The result is a biography that feels like a first-hand account. It effectively illuminates the personality and character of its central figure, while at the same time it also describes and explains the riverine campaign as a whole: from the conversion of the first gunboats through the battles for Forts Henry and Donelson, Island No. 10, Memphis, Vicksburg, and the Red River campaign. Largely forgotten today, Phelps was on the cusp of greatness in 1862-63. Initially ambivalent about the war, writing a friend in 1861 that he recognized "the right of revolution under wrong unredressed" (no), he nevertheless accepted assignment to the western flotilla being assembled at Cincinnati. One of the first navy officers to command a gunboat on the Mississippi River system, he won the early trust ofhis commanding officers and served as flag captain for both Andrew H. Foote and Charles H. Davis. He was both daring and prudent and compiled an unmatched record of success, first in command ofthe "wood clad" Conestoga then ofthe larger ironcladBenton. When Davis left to head the Bureau of Navigation, Phelps believed he was in line to command the Mississippi Squadron. 244CIVIL WAR HISTORY But as Slagle makes clear, Phelps was a man who not only drove himself to perfection, he also demanded it in others. He was candid to a fault. When he felt aggrieved, he said so; when he perceived inefficiency in others (including his superiors), he pointed it out. Phelps was particularly outspoken when officers whom he believed less deserving than he won credit or promotion. Finally, he was not averse to calling on his friends to apply political pressure on his behalf. Not surprisingly, none of these traits endeared him to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, who told Davis pointedly to "check his ambition" (294). As a result, it was David Dixon Porter and not Seth Phelps who got the command and historical immortality. The rest of Phelps's Civil War career was an anticlimax. Assigned to command the Eastport, the newest and largest river ironclad, he found it an unlucky vessel. He missed the climactic Vicksburg campaign because the Eastport was unready for sea, and during the Red River campaign of 1 864 the Eastport struck a mine and was so badly damaged it had to be destroyed. Subsequently passed over for major commands, and disgusted by the promotion of some whom he felt were less qualified, Phelps resigned from the navy in October 1864. Slagle's book is a significant contribution to the literature on the war in the western theater and one of the best books on the navy's role in the Civil War to come out in many years. Craig L. Symonds U.S. Naval Academy Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860-April 1861. Edited by Jon L. Wakelyn. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina...

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