Review - "North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume XXII - Confederate States Navy, Confederate States Marine Corps, and Charlotte Naval Yard" by Hatton & Meekins

[North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume XXII - Confederate States Navy, Confederate States Marine Corps, and Charlotte Naval Yard edited by Katelynn A. Hatton & Alex Christopher Meekins (North Carolina Office of Archives and History, 2024). Cloth, maps, photos, illustrations, roster, appendix section, index. Pages:xi,468. ISBN:978-0-86526-504-2. $55]

Currently under the auspices of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, the origins of the North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster series stretch all the way back to 1961. As explained on the jacket flap, the project's mission is "to publish a service record for every man who served in a unit raised in North Carolina during the Civil War, and to publish a history of each of these units." With previous entries focused on army and militia units and leaders, the final Confederate volume^*, North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Volume XXII - Confederate States Navy, Confederate States Marine Corps, and Charlotte Naval Yard, awards the nautical service's sailors, marines, and naval station support personnel their just due. The book compiles roster information on roughly 2,450 individuals.

To call the volume's text a supporting narrative to the roster feature does not do justice to its depth and quality. Many aspects of the naval war fought on North Carolina rivers and sounds have been well addressed among numerous specialized manuscripts, scholarly articles, and chapters within broader studies, but editors Katelynn Hatton and Christopher Meekins employ both synthesis and their own primary research to create for this series a remarkably fresh and comprehensive overview of the subject. In fact, no other single-volume study of the Confederate Navy in North Carolina waters approaches the inclusiveness of this one. In it, Hatton and Meekins provide important big picture views and interpretations of events and strategy, but they also explore on a more tactical level an extensive array of squadron-level operations and single-ship actions along with a host of land and seaborne raids of both well known and highly obscure natures.

The text offers in-depth explanations of the many military, economic, and political challenges involved with creating a Confederate naval presence in North Carolina from scratch. The most defining setback to that process was the great success of the Burnside Expedition in seizing strategic points located along the North Carolina coastline. Similar to how the fall of New Orleans in April 1862 dramatically decreased Confederate capacity for building a navy to serve on the western waters, the quick loss of eastern North Carolina, according to the authors, set Confederate naval construction in the area back by at least a year. That was critical lost time that could not be made up. Additionally, outside of Wilmington's preserved facilities, enemy seizure of the rest of the North Carolina coast's shipyards and ports forced new warships to be constructed at ad hoc facilities located some distance upriver, an inescapable liability that limited design possibilities (ex. displacement and draft considerations). So equipment saved from Gosport in Virginia went to the new naval yard at Charlotte, North Carolina and to additional yard facilities for ironclad construction established at places such as Tarboro on the Tar River and Whitehall on the Neuse. In carrying out the region's ironclad program, well-defended Wilmington had it better when it came to industrial potential, but the authorities there labored under similar manpower and resource restrictions.

Indeed, the leadership, strategy, organization, interservice relations, and resource allocation associated with the ironclad construction program in the state is a major focus of attention. In addition to limited availabilities of everything needed (especially skilled labor, powerful steam engines, and iron for armor plating), the naval yards in North Carolina also had to compete with the supply and logistical needs of the army in Virginia for use of the region's overworked rail system. The various naval construction yards also had to compete with each other for pieces of the human and material resource pie, and the dispersal of effort involved in all that greatly extended the project finishing times for every ironclad and exposed the safety of many to ever increasing Union land and naval encroachment. The careers of the CSS North Carolina, Albemarle, Neuse, and Raleigh (along with the particular challenges and problems associated with each of those ironclads) are discussed at some length, as are the fates of others either burned on the stocks to escape capture or destroyed by enemy raiders.

The Confederacy's overall return on investment when it came to its ironclad programs is a hotly debated topic. Some have argued that coordinated defense systems of torpedoes, obstructions, and fortified heavy batteries could have fulfilled the same defensive purposes as ironclad squadrons and at a fraction of the cost. On the other hand, ironclads, even deployed singly, held significant "fleet in being" value, and adoption of purely defensive measures also meant that strategic locations once lost had almost no possibility of being regained without the punching power provided by ironclads. As editors Hatton and Meekins note, aside from the Albemarle's signal contribution to the recapture of Plymouth in 1864, the overall benefits the Confederate war effort gained from use of its North Carolina ironclads (most of which were destroyed or dismantled by their own crews after experiencing relatively little action over the course of their existence) were not in favorable proportion to the sheer amount of scarce financial and material investment poured into their construction. With active ironclad operations being primarily a middle-late war phenomenon in North Carolina, one also really sees the impact of the lost year referenced earlier.

Analysis of the merits and strategic impact of commerce raiding missions based out of North Carolina, specifically those of the Tallahassee and the Chickamauga, is another strong element of the study. The popularly celebrated exploits of those vessels are recounted at some length, but perhaps the most interesting issues raised by the writers surround the animosity that developed between the commerce raiders (and their mission supporters in Richmond) on one side and both local army authorities and blockade runners on the other. At Wilmington, General W.H.C. Whiting believed that the raiders only served to bring more unwanted enemy attention to the port, making his job much more difficult that it already was by 1864-65, and the runners decried being forced to allocate precious anthracite coal from their own limited stocks to the raiding ship bunkers. Accurately or not, complaining blockade runner captains also tied the successes of the cruisers against northern merchant shipping to a tightening of the North Carolina blockade and its heightened dangers to their own ships.

In addition to the differences in strategy espoused by state leaders and the Confederate authorities in Richmond, the book also reveals the interservice divisions that greatly hampered efficiency. Far different from the cooperative spirit so often demonstrated between Union generals and naval officers on the western waterways, so many incidents of serious tensions between the Confederate Army and Navy are cited in the book that it is suggestive of far more than traditional service rivalry and more of a pervasive conflict over authority, objectives, and resources that proved harmful to the general war effort in North Carolina. For example, army-navy relations were so bad for so long at the Wilmington station that an armed standoff developed between the respective commands of General Whiting and Commodore William F. Lynch, the situation only defused after both leaders were ordered to Richmond to explain themselves. Things were better elsewhere, the best example being the triumph at Plymouth, but such occasions of brotherly interservice cooperation tended to be few and far between in North Carolina.

The significant sailor and marine contributions to the land defenses of Fort Fisher and surrounding batteries during both major Union efforts to take them are well outlined in the book; however, as Hatton and Meekins explain, much of the heroics of the rank and file were hampered by the less than stellar Confederate leadership at the top from generals Braxton Bragg and Chase Whiting. As Union land and naval forces gradually overwhelmed the defenses in North Carolina and remaining naval vessels were scuttled, officers and crews were incorporated into land units that served as infantry up in Virginia during the eastern war's final campaign.

As is the case with many reference book projects, visual aids and frills are relatively few here, with just a handful of maps, photographs, and drawings scattered about the volume. There is no bibliography, but the source material is fully documented in the footnotes. In terms of strength and quality of construction, the physical package is built to withstand decades of heavy use. The jacket is lightweight, but gray cloth binding and paper are both of high standards.

It appears that no stone was left unturned in the quest for obtaining roster information. Sources used include "ship muster rolls, newspapers (casualty lists, officer appointments, etc.), Confederate paymaster receipts, North Carolina Governor's Office records, diaries, and personal letters." "Confederate pension records, the dicennial federal censuses (1860-1930), cemetery records, published reminiscences," and previous roster series titles were also consulted (pg. 243). Entries are organized alphabetically, and the most detailed ones offer personal and service-related information such as rank, birth and death dates and locations, burial site identification, enlistment/commission dates, list of appointments/commands (dates, stations, ships, etc.), promotions, transfers, wounding(s)/POW/KIA dates and info (if applicable), and sickness records. Impressed black sailors and naval yard laborers are also included. The C.S. Marine Corps and Charlotte Naval Station rosters are presented separately, as are lists of ships stationed in North Carolina, blockade runners that passed in and out of Wilmington, and other vessels upon which North Carolinians served.

In this first exposure to the North Carolina Civil War roster series, this reviewer has come away roundly impressed by the depth of research and effort that went into both the history and roster features of Volume XXII. The narrative portion alone ranks as one of the best naval histories in the Civil War literature. If the other series installments display the same degree of thorough and authoritative excellence, one is surely left with a truly monumental reference tool for future generations of scholars, genealogists, and topic enthusiasts.

Additional Note:
* - As mentioned in the earlier CWBA Booknotes entry, in fulfillment of the ongoing mission the editors are now working on the Union series, which will "include service records of North Carolinians who served in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps." However, that doesn't automatically mean that the Confederate series is finished for good with the release of Volume XXII, as new information is always being solicited from the public and an addendum is cited as a distinct possibility. If you feel you have any information that might help, follow the series link provided in the review above and you'll find submission requirements and suggestions.