Significance of the First Battle of Memphis

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This is an excerpt from an entry in Wikipedia about the First Battle of Memphis

The First Battle of Memphis was a naval battle fought on the Mississippi River immediately above the city of Memphis on June 6, 1862, during the American Civil War. The engagement was witnessed by many of the citizens of Memphis. It resulted in a crushing defeat for the Rebels, and marked the virtual eradication of a Confederate naval presence on the river. Despite the lopsided outcome, the Union Army failed to grasp its strategic significance. Its primary historical importance is that it was the last time civilians with no prior military experience were permitted to command ships in combat. As such, it is a milestone in the development of professionalism in the United States Navy...

...The battle, which took less than two hours in the early morning hours of June 6th, resulted in the immediate surrender of the city of Memphis to Federal authority by noon that day.​

The battle of Memphis was, aside from the later appearance of the ironclad CSS Arkansas, the final challenge to the Federal thrust down the Mississippi River against Vicksburg. The river was now open down to that city, which was already besieged by Farragut's ships, but the Federal Army authorities did not grasp the strategic importance of the fact for nearly another six months. Not until November would the Union Army under Ulysses S. Grant attempt to complete the opening of the river.[2]

The poor performance of the River Defense Fleet, both at Memphis and at the earlier Battle of New Orleans, was the final demonstration that naval operations had to be commanded by trained professionals subject to military discipline.[2] The Ellet Rams remained in the Federal service, but they had no opportunity for combat of the sort for which they were intended. They were soon transformed to an amphibious raiding body, the Mississippi Marine Brigade (with no connection to the United States Marine Corps), led by Col. Ellet's brother, Lieutenant Colonel (later Brigadier General) Alfred W. Ellet. The demand for increased professionalism has also resulted in the elimination of privateering,[13] although the River Defense Fleet was not composed of privateers in the usual meaning of the term.

The battle remains a cautionary tale, demonstrating the ill effects of poor command structure. It is also interesting in that it is one of only two purely naval battles of the war,[citation needed] excluding single-ship actions, and took place 500 mi (800 km) from the nearest open water. (The other was the Battle of Plum Point Bend, also on the Mississippi.)

I found this to be very interesting. I was aware that Memphis was occupied by the federals, but I was not aware that this was due in large part to naval maneuvers, nor did I know that the naval battle set some precedents for the way that naval forces would be commanded.

Do any naval or even non-naval guys have comments on this?

- Alan
 
One of the interesting/odd facets of the naval side of the Civil War is that there were only a handful of what could be generously called "fleet actions," with coordinated groups of vessels on both sides... and of these, nearly all took place on the Mississippi.

To me, this is the Battle of Memphis, to the point where I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what might be a "second" Battle of Memphis. :cautious:

It's very much a counterpart to the battle below New Orleans in a way, insofar as the city fell almost entirely as a result of a naval move, with the city occupied by the Federal Army afterward. It didn't have the international impact of New Orleans, and also a bit less shock value-- after the repeated advances by the Union riverine forces, it wasn't as startling as the (psychologically) sudden fall of N.O. But from a continuing-operations standpoint, Memphis was an extremely important gain for the Union, and became a vital depot and hub for further operations against the Confederacy.

image052_memphis.jpg

This is, of course, a Walke... the viewer is on a hypothetical boat north of (behind) the line of Union gunboats advancing downriver abreast, with the city of Memphis to the left. To the far right, the Ellet rams Monarch and Queen of the West have just swept by the line of gunboats and are just engaging the Confederate flotilla. Intentionally or not (and I'd have to think it was intentionally, as engineer Charles Ellet was definitely thinking of the ancient rams when he suggested his steam rams), the maneuver was very similar to the ancient "periplus" style of engagement, with a striking force of rams outflanking one side of an enemy line. Since Ellet himself died of wounds sustained in the battle, we may never know for certain exactly what was in his mind that morning, unfortunately.
 
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Looking more into this this morning... discovered something I hadn't noticed before. (Odd how evidence can be right there before your eyes for years before you actually pick up on it...) Walke's account in Naval Scenes and Reminiscences includes diagrams of how the Union flotilla deployed. Because of their small size and the low quality of reproduction, it's mostly illegible in the reprints and the scanned version on Google Books, but it's readable with some difficulty in the original printings. I'll work on re-doing them in a similar way as I did for Plum Point Bend. (I did post those here, didn't I? I'll have to check. It may have been another one of those things I intended to do...)
 
On the land side, the Union had just captured Corinth, with forces considerably more powerful than the Confederates had in theater, so losing the naval action was the final nail in the coffin of any hope of holding Memphis.

wiki lists Forrest's raid in 1864 as the Second Battle of Memphis; it does read a bit oddly that one is a naval action and one on land.
 
Oops! Reminder to me to get those Memphis diagrams done... :: making note ::


Update: I've got a little finishing up to do, mostly checking to make sure I have the sequence of events as right as I can make it (as with most melees, primary sources generally agree on the main points but differ on details due to points of view); hope to have some slides up tonight.
 
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Slide 3:

Memphis3.jpg


(Note: It wasn't really possible to show this adequately on these slides, but Beauregard and Lovell played a bit of a game of "chicken" with the oncoming Queen; but the Southerners blinked first and turned away, the Lovell exposing her broadside to the Queen at a critical moment, so that the Queen nearly cut her in half. The Queen also stuck in the Lovell's wreckage long enough for another ram, probably Price, to come up and ram her in turn.)
 
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These slides depend heavily on sketches made by Henry Walke and published in his Naval Scenes and Remisincences (in an unfortunately tiny format that doesn't reproduce well); I have contrasted and corrected those images against the ORN reports of the battle. (Another first-hand account, by Junius Henri Browne in his Four Years in Secessia, is not specific or accurate enough to be of much use; but the Northern and Southern reports in ORN agree substantially when corrected for a few simple errors).

Some additional comments:

- My earlier speculation that the attack of the Queen and Monarch was after the fashion of an ancient periplus engagement, where an overlapping line of rams flanks another, was entirely incorrect. Col. Ellet directed his Queen across the path of the advancing line of gunboats and engaged the furthest-advanced of the Confederate boats.

- The oft-noted observation that the Northern gunboats "backed" into battle or did a loop is a bit misleading. The "loops" were performed at the beginning of the deployment of the Federal ironclads into line abreast, when the first three or so boats wore (kept turning to left/port around in a circle until they were pointed downstream again); this was probably done because they were lousy handlers as well as to delay until the last couple of boats could get into position.

- The channel (deeper water) ran close under Memphis; the reason the boats in trouble ran toward the west/Arkansas bank was because the water was shallow there. By contrast, the Lovell sank in the deepest part of the river and went right out of sight where she was.

- The illustration of Walke's that the last slide (explosion of Jeff Thompson) is based on is difficult to interpret. It might be that it happened considerably later, and the Union gunboats were returning upriver to Memphis after the pursuit of the remaining Southern rams when the explosion happened (in which case, the icons for the Union flotilla should be pointed the other direction).

- Bragg, Price, Sumter, and Little Rebel were all pressed into Union service on the rivers, retaining their Southern names. Beauregard was too damaged for further service, and there was not much left of Lovell or Jeff Thompson. Van Dorn would later be set afire by her own crew as Union gunboats probed up the Yazoo River.
 
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Thanks for posting the diagrams. It made (for me anyway) the battle easier to understand.

Me too. As with seeing a map (or, even better, walking the ground) when talking about a land battle, *seeing* the deployment etc. helps immensely with my understanding of it... otherwise, it's just a jumble of seemingly unrelated occurrences.
 
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