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War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865
Contributor(s): McPherson, James M. (Author)
ISBN: 146962284X     ISBN-13: 9781469622842
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
OUR PRICE:   $34.20  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: February 2015
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- History | United States - Civil War Period (1850-1877)
- History | Military - Naval
- History | Military - United States
Dewey: 973.75
LCCN: 2012007160
Series: Littlefield History of the Civil War Era
Physical Information: 0.9" H x 5.7" W x 8.9" (0.85 lbs) 288 pages
Themes:
- Chronological Period - 1851-1899
- Topical - Civil War
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Although previously undervalued for their strategic impact because they represented only a small percentage of total forces, the Union and Confederate navies were crucial to the outcome of the Civil War. In War on the Waters, James M. McPherson has crafted an enlightening, at times harrowing, and ultimately thrilling account of the war's naval campaigns and their military leaders.
McPherson recounts how the Union navy's blockade of the Confederate coast, leaky as a sieve in the war's early months, became increasingly effective as it choked off vital imports and exports. Meanwhile, the Confederate navy, dwarfed by its giant adversary, demonstrated daring and military innovation. Commerce raiders sank Union ships and drove the American merchant marine from the high seas. Southern ironclads sent several Union warships to the bottom, naval mines sank many more, and the Confederates deployed the world's first submarine to sink an enemy vessel. But in the end, it was the Union navy that won some of the war's most important strategic victories--as an essential partner to the army on the ground at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Mobile Bay, and Fort Fisher, and all by itself at Port Royal, Fort Henry, New Orleans, and Memphis.


Contributor Bio(s): McPherson, James M.: - James M. McPherson taught U.S. history at Princeton University for forty-two years and is author of more than a dozen books on the era of the Civil War. His books have won a Pulitzer Prize and two Lincoln Prizes.