Mr. Lincoln’s Brown Water Navy: The Mississippi Squadron. By Gary D. Joiner. (Lantham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. Pp. xiv, 199.)

            When examining the Western Theater of the Civil War, most historians recognize the important role the Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland rivers played in the Union campaigns. Yet, little has been written discussing the innovative fleet used to support the Union infantry in those campaigns: the brown water navy. Gary D. Joiner, professor of history at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, centers his study on the Union brown water navy and its importance to the Western Theater. By writing a narrative on this topic, Joiner provides an account of this military arm’s development, the politics associated with it, and the creation of combined operations between the Union armies and navy on the western rivers.

            Joiner initiates his study with a background of the navy before the Civil War. Prior to 1861, the U.S. Navy had little professionalization and relied primarily on private enterprise in developing officers and equipment. In the 1840s, however, this attitude changed as the federal government established the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and attempted to increase the size of the Navy. Southern politicians caused a major problem for the Union navy at the outbreak of the war during this process. They demanded that “the draft of the new vessels be deeper than the navigable depths of major southern harbors and most rivers” (p. 3). Therefore, the new ships would be strictly for use in the oceans with the “blue water” fleets.

Once the Civil War began and General-in-Chief Winfield Scott recognized the need to control the western rivers, the Lincoln Administration was forced to construct an entirely new naval force specifically for the rivers. With this, the Union administration turned to two men primarily, James Buchanan Eads and James Pook. Eads and Pook designed and constructed new timberclad and iron and tinclad ships that made the ship’s draft shallower, allowing them to freely navigate the shallower inland waterways.

            This ability to traverse the western rivers made the brown water navy important to the Union campaigns along those rivers. The fleet provided both protection, with gunboats to provide devastating firepower in support of the infantry, and supply ships, making the rivers part of the Union logistical lines in the Western Theater. The gunboats, however, showed the innovation of this fleet for the Union forces. Prior to the Civil War, few combined operations between the army and the navy took place. With the brown water navy, the Union infantry, especially Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman, worked in association with the navy, primarily under the command of Admiral David Dixon Porter. For example, Union gunboats harassed Confederate infantry from the Tennessee River throughout the night between the first and second days of the Battle of Shiloh and they provided support for the investment of Island No. 10 in early 1862. Yet, the fleet also faced failure on numerous occasions, most famously during the Red River Campaign when a number of the ships ran aground due to low water levels created by the Confederate forces. Only the ingenuity of Union naval officers, who ordered the Union forces to dam the river in order to escape, saved the fleet.

            In addition to Joiner’s strong narrative, the author provides a number of helpful maps for the readers, especially in his chapter on the Red River Campaign, as well as numerous images of the sailors, officers, and ships who served in the brown water navy. Although a solid account of the brown water fleet, it would have been interesting if Joiner had provided a short comparison between the eastern and western rivers to show why the brown water navy became such a central piece of western strategy unlike in the east. Despite this, Joiner’s monograph is an excellent overview of the brown water navy’s importance to the Union operations in the West and provides a basis for future examinations of the fleet.

Mike Burns                                                                                         Texas Christian University