Border State Guy
Cadet
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2016
It surrendered after being bombarded by the US Navy. Could the Confederates have done something different to hold the city for longer than they did?
Yes. If they had had substantial infantry forces in the area, New Orleans could not have been taken nor held as easily as it was; it was comparatively undefended, the locally-raised regiments largely having been shipped to Pensacola and then to Virginia.
Why didn't the Confederacy keep more soldiers in New Orleans, considering that it was such an important city?
As James McPherson recounts in his book " Battle Cry of Freedom" the mutiny of Foreign conscript's at the Forts defending New Orleans certainly didn't improve matters.It surrendered after being bombarded by the US Navy. Could the Confederates have done something different to hold the city for longer than they did?
Raider's do not a sufficient Navy make. The Confederacy made no serious effort to establish a sufficient size blue water Navy that could do what a Navy is supposed to do and that is secure it's ports and maritime trade routes.It surrendered after being bombarded by the US Navy. Could the Confederates have done something different to hold the city for longer than they did?
Raider's do not a sufficient Navy make. The Confederacy made no serious effort to establish a sufficient size blue water Navy that could do what a Navy is supposed to do and that is secure it's ports and maritime trade routes.
Leftyhunter
Indeed it would have been. The failure of the secessionists to think thing through really crippled the chances of the Confederacy being successful in achieving independence. The secessionists simply thought that by firing a few cannon balls at Ft.Sumter the rest of the country would simply allow the secessionists to secede.I guess it would have been exceedingly difficult to build a Navy to compete with the US.
Yes but once the Union Army seized Battery Wagner they were able to greatly restrict the blockade runners in and out if Charleston. Of course the seizure of Battery Wagner was due in large part to the heroic sacrifice if the 54th Massachusetts USCT.The Confederates successfully defended Charleston. But Charleston was not the international shipping port, banking center and center of the slave trade as was New Orleans.
It was April of 1862. In a year the US had formed a western Gulf squadron. They captured ship island. The cleared out Confederate naval vessels from the gulf. They built their mortar scows and got them to Louisiana. Then they got most of the fleet over the Head of the Passes and got a army support force in place. So it mattered immensely who had a naval tradition, a functioning finance system, and the industrial wherewithal to build new naval assets.I recall reading in Chester Hearn's book on the fall of New Orleans about the misallocation of resources and administrative delays that plagued the efforts to build the two ironclads tasked with defending New Orleans. If either of those ships had been finished, I imagine that defending New Orleans would have been a much brighter prospect for the Confederates.
@Mark F. Jenkins can confirm approximately forty percent of the Union sailors were immigrants and approximately twenty five percent of the Union sailors were African Americans.