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I understand that I am not permitted to submit the same piece of work for assessment in two different modules (please tick) Module Title: _____Dissertation________________ __________________________________________________ Signed: _______________________________ Course Work Title: Scott’s Great Snake,, to what Extent was Coastal warfare Crucial to the Outcome of the American Civil Print Name: ___Joseph Davies_________ War Email: ____ _________ No. of Words: ____ Registered dyslexic? / Please DO NOT stick the corner down, this will be done by office staff once submission of your essay is recorded Date of submission :______________________ First Marker’s name and comments Mark: PLEASE NOTE: Under University regulations all marks are subject to confirmation by the External Examiner Save your essay so that the file name reads: surname - first name – module code eg: Strauss Andrew IPM1030 NOW - SUBMIT the electronic copy of your essay via your module site on BLACKBOARD For further information re essay submission procedures please see http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/interpol/current-students Second marker’s name and comments: Mark: Second Marker’s name and comments: External Examiner’s Comments 2 1st Markers Mark 2nd Marker’s Mark Agreed Mark _____________________________________________________________________ ___________ Explanation of reconciliation of marks 3 MSc(Econ) in the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc(Econ) in International History ‘Scott’s Great Snake,’ to what Extent was Coastal Warfare Crucial to the Outcome of the American Civil War? Joseph Davies September 2012 4 The word length of this dissertation is …………… DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any other degree. Signed………………………………………. (Candidate) Date………………………………………….. STATEMENT 1 This work is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Where correction services have been used, the extent and nature of the correction is clearly marked in a footnote(s). Other sources are acknowledged by footnotes giving explicit references. A bibliography is appended. Signed………………………………………. (Candidate) Date………………………………………….. STATEMENT 2 I hereby give consent for my work, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed………………………………………. (Candidate) Date………………………………………….. 5 6 ~ Table of Contents ~ ~ Abstract ~ ~ Scott’s Great Snake - Introduction ~ ~ 1. ~ ~ From the Chesapeake to the Mississippi …and Beyond – Blockade and Blockade Running ~ ~ 2. ~ ‘Within gunshot of salt water’ Coastal Land Operations ~ 3. ~ ~ Brother Jonathan, John Bull and King Cotton - the International Dimension ~ ~ ‘Laying Siege to Land-Power’ – Conclusion ~ ~ Appendix ~ ~ Bibliography ~ ~ Picture Credits ~ 7 ~ Abstract ~ Scott’s Great Snake examines the extent to which coastal operations were crucial to the outcome of the American Civil War of 1861-65. The focus falls on three key areas, blockade, land operations and international relations as they interacted with coastal war. Particular weight is given to the blockade as the main method of Union coastal warfare, to which the other two efforts related to a greater or lesser degree. Land actions served to reinforce the blockade while offering ambitious Northern officers the chance to directly influence events. Foreign relations were important to the North’s ability to continue to strangle its erstwhile members into submission due to the United States’ small stature next to the European imperial powers of the day, whose navies would have rendered coastal warfare impossible had they intervened. The cumulative effects of a strangling blockade reinforced and complimented by sympathetic land actions and the failure or success of the American belligerents’ foreign policy served to facilitate the weakening and eventual failure of the Confederate home and fighting fronts shaping the conditions in which the North’s land armies were able to triumph in 1865. 8 ~ Scott’s Great Snake ~ ‘Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!’1 In many way the possibly apocryphal words of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut upon seeing the ironclad monitor Tecumseh disappear beneath the waves in two minutes after hitting a mine in the opening phase of the Battle of Mobile Bay, sum up the attitude of many to naval, and especially coastal, operations in the American Civil War. The words are picturesque, Farragut was a picturesque man. He was a formidable Admiral, a veteran of fifty years in the United States Navy. When he gave his famous order he supposedly was lashed to the rigging of his flagship, Hartford, having refused the pleas of his officers to descend to the deck, lest he fall and be killed. This only serves to add a further level of novelty and martial splendour to the occasion, yet what the throwaway quote ultimately represents more than anything is the low esteem in which the naval dimension is held in many studies of the wider conflict. In general, Mobile Bay is one of a small number of coastal battles, along with the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac/Virginia in Hampton Roads, New Orleans and perhaps the bombardment of Fort Pulaski, Tennessee, which have intruded, if they have intruded at all, into the popular study of the War Between the States. Far 1 Hearn, Chester G. Admiral David Glasgow Farragut The Civil War Years (Annapolis, Md. Naval Institute Press, 1998) pp262-3 9 more storied in naval terms are the exploits of the Confederate raiders, the Florida, Shenandoah and especially the Alabama. These picturesque ships were commanded by picturesque captains and fought a picturesque war largely free from the blood and carnage of Fredericksburg, Shiloh or Antietam, or the boredom of the blockade. For all this the actions of the famed Confederate raiders, vexatious as they were to the North and especially its commerce, ultimately influenced the outcome of the War only in a somewhat peripheral sense.2 Perhaps the weight given to the Southern cruisers is because glorious sea battles and picturesque ships, were comparatively rare and thus they have become famous as discrete incidents, notable enough for mention in their own right, but wholly disconnected from the larger campaigns of which they formed a part. The way in which War’s land campaigns, especially the glorious Eastern battles, have monopolised scholarship has served to marginalise the significance of naval warfare to the final outcome of the conflict. The wealth of sources available on the land dimension provides valuable context for a naval study, as well as information on its broader effects. But conclusions must be drawn by piecing together details from many smaller and more specific works. Foreign policy too, despite its importance to the North’s victory has also existed on the fringes of mainstream study. Domestic politics are usually more popular subject, especially in 2 Konstam, Angus Confederate Raider 1861-65 (Oxford, Osprey 2003) p4 10 terms of their role in the origins of the War, Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation policies and his 1864 election victory; studies of which again usually attribute only peripheral importance to naval or coastal warfare. In many ways this can be attributed to the fact that the greatest part played by the US Navy in attacking the Confederacy was not upon the high seas in naval actions contested in the best traditions of daring and glory à la Nelson (or in a more distinctly American context) Decatur or John Paul Jones. It was along the southern coastline from Virginia to Texas that the greater part of the naval war took place. This coastal dimension remains unglamorous. The preponderance of coastal operations, constituting the most muscular coils of the titular serpent, consisted of blockade, by far the most significant, and often most ignored, of the Union’s seaborne efforts to win the war. Blockade was the earliest identified and most resource intensive method employed by the North against the Confederacy, as such much of what the North did in naval terms was directly or indirectly connected with maintaining its choking effect. As a subject blockade can be dull, especially when its importance is only peripherally acknowledged. Enjoying a similar tendency to dreariness are the efforts made by the North in international diplomacy in order that the Union could continue to conduct its strangling campaign unmolested. This is in itself odd, 11 since the sphere of both Northern and Southern diplomacy contains at least as many picturesque characters as does the military effort. The sphere of Civil War international politics includes the likes of William H. Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, a man prone to alcohol-induced, vituperative rhetoric against Britain. Then there are the Confederate commissioners, among them William Lowndes Yancey (who desired a resumption of the African slave trade) and John Slidell, a man of whom it was said that if locked in a cell (as he would find himself in 1861) he ‘would conspire with the mice against the cat.’3 The Civil war’s international diplomacy was vital to the continuance of the North’s coastal war against the South yet even in the event that the importance of the latter has been acknowledged, the diplomatic aspect has still found itself treated in discrete terms much as have the individual engagements in all but a small number of works. The ‘Trent Affair,’ though an undeniably important crisis point in Union-British foreign relations, is often the only major penetration of the political sphere into the study of the Civil War and its naval dimension.