Elusive Victory: The Union Navy's War along the Western Waters

It was about 6:30 a.m. on May 24, 1864, when Rebel gunners opened fire on the USS Curlew, a tinclad patrolling a troublesome stretch of the Mississippi River just north of Greenville, Mississippi. Acting masters mate De Witt C. Morse scrambled belowdecks to one of the boat's cannons and fired several rounds before the lock string broke. He moved to a second gun, another 24-pounder, "and fired it as fast as the men could load it," even as a solid shot smashed through the boat's casemate and almost tore off both of Morse's legs. Another three balls entered the tinclad and sent shrapnel and splinters "flying all around [the] decks." Minié balls rattled against the Curlew's sides like hail as Southern sharpshooters targeted the gun ports. Suddenly, the shooting stopped; the Southerners limbered their guns and fled from the river. As he thought about the thirty-minute firefight six days later, Morse concluded wryly, "Not all Quiet on the Mississippi yet."¹

Seeing the war through Morse's eyes, that is, recognizing that combat along the western waters devolved into sporadic bursts of violence between Union gunboats and Southern attackers, challenges traditional interpretations of the activities, influence, and accomplishments of the Union's brownwater navy. Most scholarship on the Mississippi Squadron emphasizes the role of Union gunboats in neutralizing Confederate forts, defeating the Confederate River Defense Fleet at Memphis, assisting in the surrender of Vicksburg, and supporting the Red River Campaign. Indeed, John Milligan's classic Gunboats Down the Mississippi ends with the surrender of Vicksburg, Gary Joiner's book adds a chapter on the Red River Campaign, and James McPherson and Craig Symonds stress the importance of the Mississippi Squadron's traditional war in their recent books.² The irregular war Morse experienced appears in a few accounts, with Jeffrey Patrick's introduction to De Witt Morse's letters and Myron Smith's operational history of the tinclads being the most notable.³

The real importance of the Mississippi Squadron was that it protected the Union's vulnerable supply lines and fought the Rebels who threatened them. In 1861 and 1862, the Union constructed large ironclads that slugged it out with Confederate forts and opposing gunboats. Southerners countered with a series of ambushes against the river steamers that supplied Northern armies. The Mississippi Squadron responded by building a fleet of small vessels that guarded Union supply lines and pursued a war of exhaustion against detached Southern soldiers, guerrillas, and civilians. This irregular war was frequent—I have documented 559 individual episodes—and, as can be seen in map 1, ranged widely across the western waters. Although the Mississippi Squadron could not defeat its foe, it provided enough security for troop transports and supply boats to keep the Union war machine functional. While the Union could not win the Civil War by controlling the western waters, it certainly could lose the contest by allowing Confederates to sever its supply lines.⁴

Combat between Gunboats and Rebels, 1861–1865. This map shows the locations of hostile encounters between Union gunboats and southern soldiers, guerrillas, and civilians. Much of the brownwater navy's activity devolved into attacks on southern property. (Courtesy Sam Gudmestad, GIS Centroid, Colorado State University)

Seeing the war along the western waters in a new way speaks to the nature of combat in the Civil War and how much the irregular war influenced the conflict's character. Rebels forced the Union to commit significant resources to the river war, as fourteen thousand men served in the Mississippi Squadron and the government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building the fleet. Just as important, the Mississippi Squadron's attacks against Rebels spilled over into a series of raids against civilians that have not been studied in any meaningful way. The Union's theft of food, the flight of white citizens away from the combat zone, and the exodus of African Americans led to a scarcity of calories along the western waters but generally...