PDF The Weight of Their Votes: Southern Women and Political Leverage in the 1920s by Lorraine Gates Schuyler in History

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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.