Primarily a land war?

[Specster]

Keep in mind that Farragut came up river as far as Vicksburg.

Im not getting your point. New Orleans fell welll before vicksburg. Vicksburg was an elevated fortress that could rain down rounds on any ships in the Mississippi in that vacinity. Draft was also an issue, deep draft vessels did not have access to many of connecting water systems. Vicksburg was a tough nut to crack, Grant was a genius is making that nut crack. Many people want to blame Pemberton for the loss, I think that is just wishful thinking

 

[wausaubob]

5.5 Million tons. Most of it owned by people in the paid labor states. There was an ocean going fleet, a fishing fleet, and a whaling fleet.
But the boats that mattered plied the internal rivers, the Great Lakes and the canals in places like Illinois and New York. The shipments to and from Panama usually had escorts, but Semmes did capture an outbound ship headed towards Panama. The ship was loaded with marines, whom he paroled.
Lincoln's point in the preliminary report, the US fleets lose about 125,000 tons per year to wrecks and decay. Semmes effect was like a bad storm season. And the ocean going fleet was never rebuilt in US ports, and Congress did not invest much in the navy either after the US Civil War. There was money to be made in railroads, steel and a thousand different applications of steam power to industry. I think there may have been some progress with respect to kerosene, gasoline and internal combustion. Is that where US investment money went?

 

[wausaubob]

Im not getting your point. New Orleans fell welll before vicksburg. Vicksburg was an elevated fortress that could rain down rounds on any ships in the Mississippi in that vacinity. Draft was also an issue, deep draft vessels did not have access to many of connecting water systems. Vicksburg was a tough nut to crack, Grant was a genius is making that nut crack. Many people want to blame Pemberton for the loss, I think that is just wishful thinking

The formula was usually the same. Have the boats assist in making an unopposed landing and have the army isolate the garrison.
The Confederates had good gunners. But there were usually vulnerable from the landside of the garrison because they did not have adequate forces to control the approaches.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Im not getting your point. New Orleans fell welll before vicksburg. Vicksburg was an elevated fortress that could rain down rounds on any ships in the Mississippi in that vacinity. Draft was also an issue, deep draft vessels did not have access to many of connecting water systems. Vicksburg was a tough nut to crack, Grant was a genius is making that nut crack. Many people want to blame Pemberton for the loss, I think that is just wishful thinking

I suggest you refresh your memory of the timeline of the Vicksburg Campaign. Grant's crossing of the river was the culmination of a year long series of events.

 

[Rhea Cole]

The formula was usually the same. Have the boats assist in making an unopposed landing and have the army isolate the garrison.
The Confederates had good gunners. But there were usually vulnerable from the landside of the garrison because they did not have adequate forces to control the approaches.

Napoleon said that a fortress is only strong as its flanks. Grant's campaign included cavalry raids [ Grierson] riverine incursions, establishing a supply line in Arkansas, taking the transports / gunboats below Vicksburg, intelligence gathering far into the interior & disinformation. All of that left the CSA brain trust with their eyes rolling looking everywhere but where Grant was going.

 

[leftyhunter]

Abraham Lincoln would disagree with this post, insofar as he wrote his cabinet in the summer of 1864 predicting he would not win re-election, because the War. But hindsight is the gift that keeps giving.

Funny thing here, five pages of Neo-Unionists bickering and no one has pointed out that Confederate Commerce Raiders all but destroyed the Northern merchant fleet. It took decades after the war to rebuild it.

Even if Lincoln wasn't reelected that doesn't mean there would be an independent Confederate nation has McClellan made clear when he accepted the Democratic Nomination for the Presidency in 1864. It's immaterial that it took the US longer to rebuild it's merchant marine fleet has the Union not the Confederacy won the war. Besides most Western nations would over time just register their ships in Liberia or Panama so on paper they don't have much of a merchant marine fleet. The US economy grew quickly in the post ACW era so it really didn't matter how many ships a few Confederate raiders sunk .
Leftyhunter

 

[wausaubob]

Napoleon said that a fortress is only strong as its flanks. Grant's campaign included cavalry raids [ Grierson] riverine incursions, establishing a supply line in Arkansas, taking the transports / gunboats below Vicksburg, intelligence gathering far into the interior & disinformation. All of that left the CSA brain trust with their eyes rolling looking everywhere but where Grant was going.

Bombing a Confederate fort sometimes worked. But isolating the garrison almost always worked. Of course Gilmore came up with a third method. Set up some heavy guns, rifled and smoothbore, and smash a hole in the fort.