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DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER
901 M STREET SE -- WASHINGTON NAVY YARD
WASHINGTON DC 20374-5060
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DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER
901 M STREET SE -- WASHINGTON NAVY YARD
WASHINGTON DC 20374-5060
Civil War 1861 - 1865
As a result of operations on the high seas, on rivers, and in bays and
harbors, the Navy was a decisive factor in the Civil War's outcome.
The Union Navy blockaded some three thousand miles of Confederate coast
from Virginia to Texas in a mammoth effort to Cut off supplies, destroy
the Southern economy, and discourage foreign intervention. The Navy joined
with the Army to launch a series of major amphibious assaults, including
those at Port Royal Sound, South Carolina, under Flag Officer Samuel F.
DuPont, and Wilmington, North Carolina, led by Admiral David Dixon Porter.
These successful actions sealed off Confederate blockade-runner havens,
and assured blockading ships essential coaling stations and bases on the
Southern coast.
Admiral David Glasgow Farragut's victory at New Orleans denied Confederate
egress from the Mississippi, and opened that mighty river to penetration
northward by Union forces. In a giant pincers campaign, river gunboats moved
north and south along the Mississippi and her tributaries.
Following the capture of strategic Fort McHenry by Flag Officer Andrew
Hull Foote, one Confederate river stronghold after another fell to the combined
attack of the Union Navy and Army. Vicksburg, the final bastion, was battered
into submission 4 July 1863, and the Confederacy was mortally split along
the vital Mississippi artery. Meanwhile in the east, the historic Monitor-Virginia
(ex-Merrimack) battle, first combat between ironclads, marked the
dawn of a new era in naval warfare. The most famous of Confederate commerce
raiders, Alabama, Captain Raphael Semmes, played havoc with Northern
shipping until being brought to bay off the French coast and sunk in a ship-to-ship
duel with Kearsarge, Captain John Winslow.
Although Confederate forces fought valiantly throughout the war, control
of the sea by the Union Navy isolated the South, and gave Northern military
forces the added dimension of mobility which sea power provides.
3 Silver Stars
1. Blockade operations
2. Capture of Hatteras Inlet, N.C. (29 August l861)
3. Capture of Port Royal Sound, S.C. (7 November 1861)
4. Capture of Fort McHenry, Tennessee River (6 February 1862)
5. Capture of Roanoke lsland-key to Albemarle Sound (7-8 February 1862)
6. USS Monitor-CSS Virginia (ex-Merrimark) (9 March
1862)
7. Battle of New Orleans (24 April 1862)
8. Capture of Vicksburg (4 July 1863)
9. USS Kearsarge-CSS Alahama (19 June 18G4)
10. Battle of Mobile Bay (5 August 1864)
11. Destruction of CSS Albemarle (27-28 October 1864)
12. Capture of Fort Fisher, Wilmington, N.C. (13-15 January 1865)
13. Operations on the Mississippi and tributaries
14. Campaigns in the Chesapeake and tributaries
15. Atlantic operations against commerce raiders and blockade runners
07 August 1996