Success Is All That Was Expected: The South Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War (review)

Dr. Browning has produced a well-written, superbly researched, and quite simply indispensable contribution to the naval historiography of the Civil War. Although he probably invests too much effort in trying to exonerate Rear Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont (a classic Civil War figure of debate) by shifting the blame for the U.S. Navy's "failure" at Charleston to Washington (particularly to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and his Assistant, Gustavus Fox), this is his well-earned prerogative. Either Du Pont "never stood a chance" to capture Charleston, as Du Pont himself argued and Browning agrees, or he did. Either "it was a failure in the Union's leadership," or Du Pont (and then Rear-Admiral John A. Dahlgren) "feared defeat" by assuming Charleston's combined defences "were too formidable."

Browning's companion-piece to From Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War (1993) is thus rather more "The Siege of Charleston" than a history of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, and in that sense is probably the most authoritative study of this important Civil War campaign ever made; surpassing in scope and detail Rowena Reed's brilliant analysis in Combined Operations in the Civil War (1978). If, however, Success Is All That Was Expected suffers from any weakness it is probably near-sightedness—ironic, since this is the primary criticism made of Union leaders in their ultimately futile fixation with the capture of the "cradle of the Rebellion," whose value was openly acknowledged to be more political than strategic.

In fact, Charleston was the greatest, most enduring focal point of the Civil War's propaganda war. (How important that issue was or was not to the war effort itself, North and South, is another question which remains largely unasked and unanswered.) Perhaps not ironically too, the Union Navy deployed its greatest propaganda weapon—its high-tech fleet of coastal defence/assault ironclads—to smite Confederate defiance. Why were the ironclads, and particularly John Ericsson's monitors, considered powerful propaganda? Because their continued existence, like that of Rebel Charleston itself, drew attention from European leaders always hovering on the issue of Confederate national recognition and intervention in the conflict. In the "Bigger Picture," Welles, Fox, William Seward (the Secretary of State), President Lincoln, and Ericsson all realised that sensational political victories—or defeats—helped to crush—or revive—the Southern will to fight, based in no small degree on moral if not material sympathy garnered from abroad. The American Civil War: a war of wills.

Nowhere was Union naval resolve tried more fiercely than in the siege of Charleston. Indeed, one wonders whether, once begun, Lincoln's government ever had a choice of abandoning it, since "Everyone" (from Northern Copperheads to the London Times) was watching. How to actually capture the rebel stronghold was another matter: if the ironclads could smash their way up to the city's wharves and threaten bombardment would it actually surrender? And Fort Sumter and the outer defences too? Obstructions, combined with "torpedo" mine-fields, played a big part in frustrating even these concerns; was it worth risking the loss or even capture of a few of the nation's geo-strategically valuable monitors in presuming the Confederates would not choose to fight "street by street," after all? In his letter to Dahlgren of 9 October 1863, Welles crucially specified that "the Department is disinclined to have its only iron-clad squadron incur extreme risks. . . . Other operations of great importance on our southern coast are pending, and in case of a foreign war, which has sometimes seemed imminent, these vessels will be indispensable for immediate use." At any rate, Du Pont's
7 April 1863...