War on the Waters
War on the Waters

Author: James M. McPherson

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2012-09-17

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0807837326

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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.

Joe Brown's Pets
Joe Brown's Pets

Author: William Robert Scaife

Publisher: Mercer University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 9780865548831

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At the beginning of the Civil War, Georgia ranked third among the Confederate states in manpower resources, behind only Virginia and Tennessee. With an arms-bearing population somewhere between 120,000 and 130,000 white males between the ages of 16 and 60, this resource became an object of a great struggle between Joseph Brown, governor of Georgia, and Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. Brown advocated a strong state defense, but as the war dragged on Davis applied more pressure for more soldiers from Georgia. In December 1863, the state's general assembly reorganized the state militia and it became known as Joe Brown's Pets. Civil War historians William Scaife and William Bragg have written not only the first history of the Georgia Militia during the Civil War, but have produced the definitive history of this militia. Using original documents found in the Georgia Department of Archives and History that are too delicate for general public access, Scaife and Bragg were granted special permission to research the material under the guidance of an archivist and conducted under tightly controlled conditions of security and preservation control.