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

Robert M. Browning's superb new study of the Union Navy's South Atlantic Blockading Squadron is a worthy companion to his previous award-winning book, From Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War (1993). In Success Is All That Was Expected, Browning relates the story of arguably the most important Union naval command of the Civil War. Exhaustively mining all the relevant primary and secondary sources, Browning skillfully explores issues of strategy, joint operations, logistics, technology, civil-military relations, and senior leadership. The result is a compelling and richly detailed account of an organization that began with great promise, but ultimately failed to deliver.

In many ways, the story of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron is a tragic one. As Browning observes, the Squadron's operations were "full of bravery, sacrifice, and victory, as well as unfulfilled expectations, lost opportunities, and failure" (p. 5). Browning places the lion's share of the blame for the squadron's failure to achieve its potential on a lack of strategic direction from Washington, D.C. The obsession of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and his assistant, Gustavus V. Fox, with Charleston prevented them from seeing the wider strategic and operational possibilities that existed in the theater. The capable officers commanding the Squadron—Rear Admirals Samuel Francis Du Pont (1861-63) and John A. Dahlgren (1863-65)—had to not only shut down Confederate seaborne commerce over five hundred miles of tortuous coastline, but they were also pressured by their civilian leadership to allocate a disproportionate amount of resources and attention to Charleston.

After his widely hailed seizure of the centrally located natural anchorage at Port Royal, South Carolina, in November 1861, Du Pont conducted a number of successful joint operations with the Army and proceeded to strengthen the blockade. Browning rightly places great emphasis on the challenges inherent in planning and conducting joint operations without a central strategic focus, and the difficulties faced by Du Pont as he tried to overcome the natural friction between the Army and the Navy. Logistics also play a prominent role in the Squadron's story and Browning does not slight this most critical component of any military operation. One of Du Pont's innovations was to establish a number of repair shops at Port Royal; this enabled him to provide maintenance support to his warships on station, thereby achieving extremely high levels of readiness.

Despite Du Pont's great start, Browning persuasively argues that "the defining moment of the Civil War for the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron was the 7 April 1863 attack on Charleston." Du Pont's failure to seize the Rebel capital with an all-ironclad fleet erased all the outstanding work the Squadron had done before, ended Du Pont's career, and "left the subsequent commanding officers fearful of failure" (p. 349). As Du Pont's replacement, Dahlgren could not afford to ease the pressure on Charleston, even long after it ceased to have any real strategic value. The Union should have used the base at Port Royal and the unsurpassed—and uncontested—strategic mobility that the squadron provided for a series of coordinated joint operations aimed at well-defined strategic objectives.

A number of simple yet instructive maps coupled with Browning's forceful and clear prose make this book a joy to read. His fresh insights into the development and execution of Northern naval strategy and the command challenges inherent in one of the Union's most important naval organizations shed new light on the conduct of the war. Anyone interested in the Civil War or the United States Navy should read this fascinating book.