Booknotes: "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day"

New Arrival:

• "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865 by Paul Brueske (Savas Beatie, 2024).

It dismays modern observers today as much as it frustrated contemporary proponents way back then that it took so long for Union forces to finally close the vital Gulf port of Mobile, Alabama to Confederate blockade runners. When the campaign against Mobile did get underway at long last, it unfolded in two distinct stages. The first, consisting of both a naval offensive into Mobile Bay that famously damned the torpedoes and accompanying amphibious attacks that forced the fall of bay entrance guardian forts Morgan and Gaines, occurred during August 1864. The second and final phase played out during March and April of 1865, culminating in the April 12 surrender of the city.

The finest modern overview of the 1865 campaign is Paul Brueske's The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 (2018), but given its nature the fights for the east bay Confederate forts (Blakeley and Spanish Fort) could only be summarized. The solid discussion of the action at Fort Blakeley (the April 9 assault in particular) found in Mike Bunn's The Assault on Fort Blakeley: The Thunder and Lightning of Battle (2021) addresses one of those two gaps in book-length standalone coverage, and Brueske's new study, "Digging All Night and Fighting All Day": The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865, fills the other with an even more detailed account.

From the description: "The bloody two-week siege of Spanish Fort, Alabama (March 26–April 8, 1865) was one of the final battles of the Civil War. Despite its importance and fascinating history, surprisingly little has been written about it. Many considered the fort as the key to holding the important seaport of Mobile, which surrendered to Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby on April 12, 1865."

Canby had a large army at his disposal for operations on both sides of the bay (over 40,000 men), but the Confederates were able to slip in a number of veteran units, albeit battered ones, into the defenses. Though still greatly outnumbered, the Confederates were able to offer fairly stiff resistance given the circumstances.

More from the description: "After the devastating Tennessee battles of Franklin and Nashville in late 1864, many Federals believed Mobile’s garrison—which included a few battered brigades and most of the artillery units from the Army of Tennessee—did not have much fight left and would evacuate the city rather than fight. They did not. Despite being outnumbered about 10 to 1, 33-year-old Brig. Gen. Randall Lee Gibson mounted a skillful and spirited defense that “considerably astonished” his Union opponents. The siege and battle that unfolded on the rough and uneven bluffs of Mobile Bay’s eastern shore, fought mainly by veterans of the principal battles of the Western Theater, witnessed every offensive and defensive art known to war."

In support of the text are six maps. The appendix section offers a broad range of supplementary material, including army and navy orders of battle, ordnance information, casualty and prisoner lists, and much more.