Devils in Disguise: Masculinity and the Irregular Naval War Along the Lower Mississippi

Devils in Disguise: Masculinity and the Irregular Naval War along the Lower Mississippi Within weeks of the first volley at Fort Sumter, New Orleans bore witness to an altogether different salvo. On May 6, 1861, the docks at Algiers, Louisiana ignited into flames. Nine commercial steamboats— General Pike, Editor, Grenada, Telegram, Baltic, Republic, Madison, Dollie Webb, and Conqueror— mysteriously caught fire. In a matter of moments, over 4,500 tons of timber splintered into kindling and the combined investment of $28,500 disintegrated into ash. Yet, the event was unremarkable. Despite the magnitude of such a multi- vessel conflagration, the inferno drew little local interest or concern. After all, steamboat fires— usually attributed to boiler explosions— were fairly common in the nineteenth century. On average, twenty-one percent of all antebellum riverboats burned or exploded. Between 1847 and 1857 alone, 230 steamboats caught fire. Between 1816 and 1848, 1,433 people lost their lives in riverboat explosions. As citizens of a prominent port town, New Orleanians would have been cognizant of the innate danger and combustibility of steamboats. As such, local officials quickly dismissed the incident as an accident signifying that the notion of intentional boat burning had not yet entered into the public consciousness. 1 Interestingly, at least one party thought the 1861 New Orleans inferno was intentional. The Cincinnati Daily Press reported that the fire was the work of a “negro incendiary.” Whether the newspaper meant that the culprit was an African American, an abolitionist Republican, or simply a degenerate was unclear. What was apparent was the paper’s declaration that the 1 United States War Department, The Annual Report of the Secretary of War (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1866), 195; Paul F. Paskoff, Troubled Waters: Steamboat Disasters, River Improvements, and American Public Policy, 1821–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), 20; Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), 287; Robert H. Gudmestead, Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011), 108. For more information on nineteenth century steamboat accidents and explosions please see Paul F. Paskoff, Troubled Waters: Steamboat Disasters, River Improvements, and American Public Policy, 1821–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007). For quantitative data on riverboat disasters please see C. Bradford Mitchell, ed., Merchant Vessels of the United States 1790-1868 “The Lytle-Holdcamper List,” (Staten Island: Steamship Historical Society of America, Inc., 1975) and Erik F. Haites, James Mak, and Gary M. Walton, Western River Transportation: The Era of Early Internal Development, 1810-1860 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press), 1975. 1 ©2014, Laura June Davis Please do not circulate or distribute with written consent of the author. Devils in Disguise: Masculinity and the Irregular Naval War along the Lower Mississippi steamboat burnings were the act of deliberate sabotage. The veracity of such an allegation remains unknown but it was definitely a portent of things to come.2 While locals quickly dismissed the 1861 New Orleans conflagration as an accident, by war’s end Union officials deemed all Mississippi River steamboat fires to be the act of sabotage. As early as October 1863, Union Army Chief Quartermaster Robert Allen declared, “that there are disloyal men in disguise in the employ of every steamer, and it will be difficult to eliminate them….” After the war, unsubstantiated newspaper reports claimed that over 200 steamboats along the Lower Mississippi (St. Louis to New Orleans) fell victim to Confederate boat burners during the Civil War. While exaggerated—official reports attributed sixty steamboat fires to Southern incendiaries—these reports signify a drastic change in public perception. During the latter half of the war, a small but vicious group of rebel incendiaries operated along the lower Mississippi River, wreaking havoc and invoking fear along their fiery course.3 While not mainstream sailors, boat burners did in fact take their cause to the water, making steamships and river ports their battlefields of choice. Referred to as incendiaries or naval guerrillas by contemporaries, boat burners markedly differed from bushwhackers or partisan rangers. While irregular fighters such as William Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson flaunted their exploits, naval guerrillas intentionally operated in the shadows; they skulked along the docks, secreted themselves aboard vessels, or insinuated themselves as steamboat crew members. Shock and awe may have been their aims but secrecy and terror were their watchwords of choice. And while the boat burners may not have been guerrillas in the conventional context, it is important to note that their contemporaries classified them as such. Thus, I will 2 "Varieties," Cincinnati Daily Press, May 17, 1861. 3 United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, 1880-1901), Series 1, Volume 22 (Part II), 607—hereafter referred to as the OR; OR I:48(II):196; “The Rebel Boat-Burners,” American Citizen, September 27, 1865. 2 ©2014, Laura June Davis Please do not circulate or distribute with written consent of the author. Devils in Disguise: Masculinity and the Irregular Naval War along the Lower Mississippi interchangeably refer to them as naval guerrillas, incendiaries, and boat burners—the terms ascribed to them by their nineteenth century peers. It is important to note that it was not until the summer and fall of 1863 that the naval guerrillas began their assaults in earnest. With the fall of Vicksburg in July, the Union seemingly gained unfettered access to the mighty Mississippi. President Abraham Lincoln even proclaimed that “the Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.” While conventional naval battles may have been ending, brown water irregular warfare was only just beginning. The Rebels had belatedly realized that they had failed to defend or maintain control of the Mississippi River—an essential transportation, trade, and communication route. But they soon realized that they could employ irregular warfare to thwart federal jurisdiction over the river. Thus, the Confederate naval war took on a more offensive posture after July 1863.4 One striking feature of the naval guerrillas was their definition of masculinity. By operating on the periphery of the conventional war, rebel incendiaries embodied a unique form of manhood—distinct from their enlisted or bushwhacking brethren. The boat burners redefined conventional notions of martial manhood to accommodate their seemingly savage, nefarious, and cowardly activities; they cast themselves as patriotic warriors taking explosive action. As J.W. Tucker explained, “I feel, as intensely as it is possible to feel, the vital necessity of striking hard blows now, and striking at as many points and in as many ways as possible, so as to aid our cause and save our country…I propose to destroy the enemy’s transports, arsenals, navy-yards, stores,” etc. Tucker and his fellow saboteurs firmly believed that their aggressive tactics were in the service of the Confederate cause and that they were legitimate combatants. While contemporaries may have labeled them as spineless for skulking along the shadows in the dead 4 Abraham Lincoln, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953), VI: 409. 3 ©2014, Laura June Davis Please do not circulate or distribute with written consent of the author. Devils in Disguise: Masculinity and the Irregular Naval War along the Lower Mississippi of night, setting fire to vessels, sneaking away, and never taking credit for their actions, they likely did not. Instead, they undoubtedly cast their own behavior as inventive and utilitarian; they did whatever was necessary, no matter the cost to their reputation, for the sake of the Confederate cause. Thus, the rebel incendiaries embodied a definition of masculinity that embraced aggression and ingenuity at the cost of chivalry and fame. 5 If W.E.B. DuBois was correct in his assertion that “only murder makes men,” then the naval guerrillas were certainly men. Nearly seventy people died at the hands of an organized gang of boat burners operating out of St. Louis. For example, on July 15, 1864, the Cherokee’s porter died during a multi-vessel conflagration in St Louis. The August 4, 1863 burning of the Ruth resulted in the deaths of twenty-six people—including a Union Paymaster, three Yankee clerks, one woman, and three negroes. Most of the casualties were drowning victims who fell into the water when the ship’s plank collapsed onto the deck. And, the forty-odd victims of the Robert Campbell, Jr. inferno (September 28, 1864) included four Federal soldiers, two children, and one was an invalid woman. The total number of deaths attributable to naval guerrillas is unknown but likely in the hundreds.6 The naval guerrillas were not altogether different from their filibuster forefathers described by historian Amy Greenberg. The rebel incendiaries too “reveled in their physical strength and ability to dominate both men and women…[and] believed that the masculine qualities of strength, aggression, and even violence, better defined a true man.” They embodied 5 OR, IV:3:125.

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