Commanding Lincoln's Navy

Commanding Lincoln's Navy PDF Author: Stephen Taaffe
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612515177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 740

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Book Description
The Union Navy played a vital role in winning the Civil War by blockading Confederate ports, cooperating with the Union Army in amphibious assaults, and operating on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. To wage this multifaceted war, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles divided the Union Navy into six squadrons. The book examines who Welles assigned to squadron command and why he appointed these officers. Taaffe argues that President Abraham Lincoln gave Welles considerable latitude in picking squadron commanders. Lincoln not only trusted Welles's judgment, but he also understood that the Navy was not as important to the Union war effort militarily and politically as the Army, so there was less of a need for him to oversee closely its operations. Welles used this authority to make appointments to squadron command based on several criteria. Welles factored into his mental calculations seniority, availability, and political connections, but he was most interested in an officer's record, character, and abilities. Although some of Welles's earliest selections left something to be desired, his insight improved markedly as the war continued and he gained a greater understanding of the Navy and its officer corps. Indeed, by the end of the conflict, Welles had become quite ruthless in his search for effective squadron commanders capable of filling the Navy's increasingly difficult missions. In doing so, he contributed greatly to Union victory in the Civil War. The book covers some of the Civil War's most important campaigns and battles, such as the Union assaults on New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile Bay, and Fort Fisher, and the fighting on the Mississippi River.

Commanding Lincoln's Navy

Commanding Lincoln's Navy PDF Author: Stephen Taaffe
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612515177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 740

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Union Navy played a vital role in winning the Civil War by blockading Confederate ports, cooperating with the Union Army in amphibious assaults, and operating on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. To wage this multifaceted war, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles divided the Union Navy into six squadrons. The book examines who Welles assigned to squadron command and why he appointed these officers. Taaffe argues that President Abraham Lincoln gave Welles considerable latitude in picking squadron commanders. Lincoln not only trusted Welles's judgment, but he also understood that the Navy was not as important to the Union war effort militarily and politically as the Army, so there was less of a need for him to oversee closely its operations. Welles used this authority to make appointments to squadron command based on several criteria. Welles factored into his mental calculations seniority, availability, and political connections, but he was most interested in an officer's record, character, and abilities. Although some of Welles's earliest selections left something to be desired, his insight improved markedly as the war continued and he gained a greater understanding of the Navy and its officer corps. Indeed, by the end of the conflict, Welles had become quite ruthless in his search for effective squadron commanders capable of filling the Navy's increasingly difficult missions. In doing so, he contributed greatly to Union victory in the Civil War. The book covers some of the Civil War's most important campaigns and battles, such as the Union assaults on New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile Bay, and Fort Fisher, and the fighting on the Mississippi River.

Commanding Lincoln's Navy

Commanding Lincoln's Navy PDF Author: Stephen Taaffe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781682479278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Union Navy played a vital role in winning the Civil War by blockading Confederate ports, cooperating with the Union Army in amphibious assaults, and operating on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. To wage this multifaceted war, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles divided the Union Navy into six squadrons. The book examines who Welles assigned to squadron command and why he appointed these officers. Taaffe argues that President Abraham Lincoln gave Welles considerable latitude in picking squadron commanders. Lincoln not only trusted Welles's judgment, but he also understood that the Navy was not as important to the Union war effort militarily and politically as the Army, so there was less of a need for him to oversee closely its operations. Welles used this authority to make appointments to squadron command based on several criteria. Welles factored into his mental calculations seniority, availability, and political connections, but he was most interested in an officer's record, character, and abilities. Although some of Welles's earliest selections left something to be desired, his insight improved markedly as the war continued and he gained a greater understanding of the Navy and its officer corps. Indeed, by the end of the conflict, Welles had become quite ruthless in his search for effective squadron commanders capable of filling the Navy's increasingly difficult missions. In doing so, he contributed greatly to Union victory in the Civil War. The book covers some of the Civil War's most important campaigns and battles, such as the Union assaults on New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile Bay, and Fort Fisher, and the fighting on the Mississippi River.

Lincoln Takes Command

Lincoln Takes Command PDF Author: Steve Norder
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1611214580
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
A detailed history of one week during the Civil War in which the American president assumed control of the nation’s military. One rainy evening in May, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln boarded the revenue cutter Miami and sailed to Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads, Virginia. There, for the first and only time in our country’s history, a sitting president assumed direct control of armed forces to launch a military campaign. In Lincoln Takes Command, author Steve Norderdetails this exciting, little-known week in Civil War history. Lincoln recognized the strategic possibilities offered by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s ongoing Peninsula Campaign and the importance of seizing Norfolk, Portsmouth, and the Gosport Navy Yard. For five days, the president spent time on sea and land, studied maps, spoke with military leaders, suggested actions, and issued direct orders to subordinate commanders. He helped set in motion many events, including the naval bombardment of a Confederate fort, the sailing of Union ships up the James River toward the enemy capital, an amphibious landing of Union soldiers followed by an overland march that expedited the capture of Norfolk, Portsmouth, and the navy yard, and the destruction of the Rebel ironclad CSS Virginia. The president returned to Washington in triumph, with some urging him to assume direct command of the nation’s field armies. The week discussed in Lincoln Takes Command has never been as heavily researched or told in such fine detail. The successes that crowned Lincoln’s short time in Hampton Roads offered him a better understanding of, and more confidence in, his ability to see what needed to be accomplished. This insight helped sustain him through the rest of the war.

Commanding Lincoln's Navy

Commanding Lincoln's Navy PDF Author: Stephen R. Taaffe
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
The Union Navy played a vital role in winning the Civil War by blockading Confederate ports, cooperating with the Union Army in amphibious assaults, and controlling the Mississippi River and its tributaries. President Lincoln understood, however, that the Navy was not as important, militarily and politically, to the war effort as the Army, so he delegated authority to his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, who divided the Navy into six squadrons and hand-picked their commanders. This book examines Welles selections and why he appointed them. While noting that the officers' records, character, and abilities were of primary importance, the author also acknowledges that political connections, seniority, and availability were also factored into the selections. He demonstrates that Welles appointments improved markedly as the war continued and as he gained a better understanding of the Navy and its officer corps.

Commander in Chief

Commander in Chief PDF Author: Geoffrey Perret
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374531270
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
An award-winning presidential biographer and military historian explains that in choosing to fight un-winnable wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, Presidents Truman, Johnson, and George W. Bush collectively sought to establish a presidency so powerful that they have created a permanent threat to the Constitution.

War in the Shallows

War in the Shallows PDF Author: John Darrell Sherwood
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 9780945274766
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
War in the Shallows, published in 2015 by the Naval History and Heritage Command, is the authoritative account of the U.S. Navy's hard-fought battle along Vietnam's rivers and coastline from 1965-1968. At the height of the U.S. Navy's involvement in the Vietnam War, the Navy's coastal and riverine forces included more than 30,000 Sailors and over 350 patrol vessels ranging in size from riverboats to destroyers. These forces developed the most extensive maritime blockade in modern naval history and fought pitched battles against Viet Cong units in the Mekong Delta and elsewhere. War in the Shallows explores the operations of the Navy's three inshore task forces from 1965 to 1968. It also delves into other themes such as basing, technology, tactics, and command and control. Finally, using oral history interviews, it reconstructs deckplate life in South Vietnam, focusing in particular on combat waged by ordinary Sailors. Vietnam was the bloodiest war in recent naval history and War in the Shallows strives above all else to provide insight into the men who fought it and honor their service and sacrifice. Illustrated throughout with photographs and maps. Author John Darrell Sherwood has served as a historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) since 1997. -- Provided by publisher.

The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy

The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy PDF Author: Gideon Welles
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096436
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 881

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Book Description
Gideon Welles’s 1861 appointment as secretary of the navy placed him at the hub of Union planning for the Civil War and in the midst of the powerful personalities vying for influence in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. Although Welles initially knew little of naval matters, he rebuilt a service depleted by Confederate defections, planned actions that gave the Union badly needed victories in the war’s early days, and oversaw a blockade that weakened the South’s economy. Perhaps the hardest-working member of the cabinet, Welles still found time to keep a detailed diary that has become one of the key documents for understanding the inner workings of the Lincoln administration. In this new edition, William E. and Erica L. Gienapp have restored Welles’s original observations, gleaned from the manuscript diaries at the Library of Congress and freed from his many later revisions, so that the reader can experience what he wrote in the moment. With his vitriolic pen, Welles captures the bitter disputes over strategy and war aims, lacerates colleagues from Secretary of State William H. Seward to General-in-Chief Henry Halleck, and condemns the actions of the self-serving southern elite he sees as responsible for the war. He just as easily waxes eloquent about the Navy's wartime achievements, extols the virtues of Lincoln, and drops in a tidbit of Washington gossip. Carefully edited and extensively annotated, this edition contains a wealth of supplementary material. The appendixes include short biographies of the members of Lincoln’s cabinet, the retrospective Welles wrote after leaving office covering the period missing from the diary proper, and important letters regarding naval matters and international law.

Lincoln's Spies

Lincoln's Spies PDF Author: Douglas Waller
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501126857
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
This major addition to the history of the Civil War is a “fast-paced, fact-rich account” (The Wall Street Journal) offering a detailed look at President Abraham Lincoln’s use of clandestine services and the secret battles waged by Union spies and agents to save the nation—filled with espionage, sabotage, and intrigue. Veteran CIA correspondent Douglas Waller delivers a riveting account of the heroes and misfits who carried out a shadow war of espionage and covert operations behind the Confederate battlefields. Lincoln’s Spies follows four agents from the North—three men and one woman—who informed Lincoln’s generals on the enemy positions for crucial battles and busted up clandestine Rebel networks. Famed detective Allan Pinkerton mounted a successful covert operation to slip Lincoln through Baltimore before his inauguration after he learns of an assassination attempt from his agents working undercover as Confederate soldiers. But he proved less than competent as General George McClellan’s spymaster, delivering faulty intelligence reports that overestimated Confederate strength. George Sharpe, an erudite New York lawyer, succeeded Pinkerton as spymaster for the Union’s Army of the Potomac. Sharpe deployed secret agents throughout the South, planted misinformation with Robert E. Lee’s army, and outpaced anything the enemy could field. Elizabeth Van Lew, a Virginia heiress who hated slavery and disapproved of secession, was one of Sharpe’s most successful agents. She ran a Union spy ring in Richmond out of her mansion with dozens of agents feeding her military and political secrets that she funneled to General Ulysses S. Grant as his army closed in on the Confederate capital. Van Lew became one of the unsung heroes of history. Lafayette Baker was a handsome Union officer with a controversial past, whose agents clashed with Pinkerton’s operatives. He assembled a retinue of disreputable spies, thieves, and prostitutes to root out traitors in Washington, DC. But he failed at his most important mission: uncovering the threat to Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth and his gang. Behind these operatives was Abraham Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents, who was an avid consumer of intelligence and a ruthless aficionado of clandestine warfare, willing to take whatever chances necessary to win the war. Lincoln’s Spies is a “meticulous chronicle of all facets of Lincoln’s war effort” (Kirkus Reviews) and an excellent choice for those wanting “a cracking good tale” (Publishers Weekly) of espionage in the Civil War.

Journal of the Civil War Era

Journal of the Civil War Era PDF Author: William A. Blair
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469608979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
The Journal of the Civil War Era Volume 3, Number 2 June 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS Editor's Note William Blair Articles Stephen Cushman When Lincoln Met Emerson Christopher Phillips Lincoln's Grasp of War: Hard War and the Politics of Neutrality and Slavery in the Western Border Slave States, 1861–1862 Jonathan W. White The Strangely Insignificant Role of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Civil War Review Essay Yael Sternhell Revisionism Reinvented? The Antiwar Turn in Civil War Scholarship Professional Notes Gary W. Gallagher The Civil War at the Sesquicentennial: How Well Do Americans Understand Their Great National Crisis? Book Reviews Books Received Notes on Contributors The Journal of the Civil War Era takes advantage of the flowering of research on the many issues raised by the sectional crisis, war, Reconstruction, and memory of the conflict, while bringing fresh understanding to the struggles that defined the period, and by extension, the course of American history in the nineteenth century.

Lincoln's Darkest Year

Lincoln's Darkest Year PDF Author: William Marvel
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547523866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
A portrait of a pivotal chapter in the Civil War, “featuring scheming politicians, bumbling generals, and an increasingly disheartened Northern public” (Brooks Simpson, author of Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822–1865). In Mr. Lincoln Goes to War, award-winning historian William Marvel focused on President Abraham Lincoln’s first year in office. In Lincoln’s Darkest Year, he paints a picture of 1862—again relying on recently unearthed primary sources and little-known accounts to offer newfound detail of this tumultuous period. Marvel highlights not just the actions but also the deeper motivations of major figures, including Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, George B. McClellan, Stonewall Jackson, and, most notably, Lincoln himself. As the action darts from the White House to the battlefields and back, the author sheds new light on the hardships endured by everyday citizens and the substantial and sustained public opposition to the war. Combining fluid prose and scholarship with the skills of an investigative historical detective, Marvel unearths the true story of our nation’s greatest crisis.