Stephen R. Mallory: Confederate Navy Chief (review)

Book Reviews EDITED BY CHARLES T. MILLER B-Il University Hall Iowa City, Iowa Stephen R. Mallory: Confederate Navy Chief. By Joseph T. Durkin, SJ. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 1954. Pp. xi, 446. $6.00.) the mtlitary history of the civil war abounds in evocative place-names. Manassas, Bull Run, Lookout Mountain, more and most of all, Gettysburg— these places and many others are for most Americans forever overlaid with emotion, legend, and history books. And when one turns to the names of military leaders, Lee, Grant, Jackson—the list is as endless as it is meaningful. But the reader will note that all these names mentioned above, as well as most of those left out, are connected with land actions. Most of us have at least a passable understanding of the sweep and significance of the fighting among the armies; but our knowledge of the naval side of this great conflict is often very limited. Beyond hazy recollections of the Monitor and the Merrimac (the Virginia, and properly so, to Southerners), and something or other about the Alabama incident, plus perhaps the one enduring naval quotable phrase of the era ("Damn the torpedoes . . .") most of us do not go. To be sure, Van Wyck Mason has begun a series of historical novels about the war on the water; but this is history by the back stairs, if not the bedroom. Yet that war had a naval side of vast importance. Not only did the Federal blockade throtde the South inexorably, but also numerous naval engagements played a notable part in the outcome of the purely military side of things. Of course, there has been a fair amount of writing about the role of sea-power in the conflict, but certain leading personalities have been unaccountably neglected. This is hard to explain, when one considers the outpouring of writing about the war; it is harder to explain when one realizes that this war saw the first development and use of weapons and tactics all too pertinent to the year 1955. In all this the subject of Father Durkin's book had a vital hand, for Stephen R. Mallory was Chief of the Confederate Navy throughout almost the entire war. Neglect of a study of him as a person seems incredible; so considerable a scholar as the late Douglas Southall Freeman called him next to Benjamin the 185 186civil war history ablest man in Jefferson Davis' cabinet. We are all indebted to Father Durian for according Mallory the biography his contribution to history deserves. This book is not the product of the winnowings of masses of primary sources, for most of them, notably Mallory's own notes (he kept a diary and wrote as many letters as most men in his position) were destroyed after Appomattox. Father Durkin, however, has had access to some new sources and has reconstructed a very living and documented picture of the man and his works. Mallory, born in either 1810 or 1811, lived the first couple of decades of his life in Key West, that half-Spanish, half-American Lands End of a place. Not unnaturally, his early interests were in the direction of the water, and at age twenty he took the job of Inspector of Customs at Key West. His spare time he spent in study, culminating at last in learning law. Here again his bent toward matters maritime asserted itself, for his practice seems to have been largely admiralty law. Lawyers often drift into politics, and so did Mallory. One senses that it was almost by accident that he was chosen by the Florida Democrats as their candidate for the United States Senate, a man neither "radical" nor yet "safe" on the burning issue of the day—slavery. Thus it was that at age forty Stephen Mallory left Florida and entered the national scene. What sort of person was he? From the nature of his clients and success of his law practice he must have been an able lawyer, capable of winning a jury on one hand and of diplomatic negotiation on the other. Even allowing for "normal" mid-nineteenth century pomposity, he strikes me as pompous. His...