Review - "The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War" by Robert Gudmestad

[The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War by Robert Gudmestad (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). Hardcover, maps, photos, appendix section, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,212/305. ISBN:978-0-8071-8491-2. $50]

The strategies, leaders, common sailors, ships, and operations associated with the Civil War period U.S. Navy's Mississippi River Squadron (the famed "Brown Water Navy") have been documented and studied in numerous book-length overviews, biographical treatments, and microhistories. Fine modern works from the likes of Gary Joiner, Barbara Tomblin, and Myron Smith have preceded this one, but what makes Robert Gudmestad's The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War exceptional is its development of fresh interpretive themes drawn from, among other sources, extensive use of newly created datasets as well as its unprecedented levels of quantitative integration (including GIS mapping) into the volume's textual description and analysis.

In a compact narrative remarkable for the breadth and amount of focused depth achieved in just over two-hundred pages of main text, Gudmestad explores the Mississippi River Squadron's origins as the army-controlled Western Gunboat Flotilla and documents the full range of its wartime activities, which included squadron-scale engagements, ship vs. ship and ship vs. shore encounters, escort duties, counterguerrilla operations, area control patrolling, and interdiction of both illicit trade and Confederate use of western waterways for their own supply, transport, and logistical uses. An exhaustive presentation of the squadron's Civil War record is beyond the book's scope, but strong summaries of the more significant battles and campaigns (among them Forts Henry and Donelson, early-1862 White River operations, the Battle of Arkansas Post, the 1862-63 Vicksburg Campaign, and 1864's Red River Campaign and Johnsonville debacles) are provided as are brief accounts of a myriad of smaller-scale actions. Shipboard life (including discipline and punishment) is also vividly described and the squadron's central role in military emancipation highlighted at some length.

A key component of the research behind the book is the impressive sailor database compiled from official muster rolls by the author and his team. Their combined efforts produced detailed information on 14,754 sailors. With the likelihood that another 1-2,000 individuals went unexamined, the author estimates that up to 17,000 men served in the squadron. In both text and tabular formats, a detailed demographic profile of Brown Water Navy recruits emerges from that source. Differences between Union sailors and army soldiers are noteworthy. Western sailors were far less likely than Union Army volunteers to be farmers, more likely to be immigrants, and both younger and slightly shorter than their foot soldier counterparts. While there were also demographic differences between the navy's deep water and inland waterway sailors, Gudmestad contends that both groups shared a general lack of ideological enlistment motivation. Though William Marvel has recently argued in convincing fashion that economic considerations drove early Union Army enlistment in previously underappreciated ways, most scholarship highlights saving the Union as the army volunteer's primary motivation (with some enlistees also expressing earnest desire to free the slaves). By contrast, it is the author's conclusion here (though one wishes Gudemestad had developed the argument at greater length in the book) that the evidence best supports the claim that economic reasons, including the prospects of prize money, were what generally motivated western sailors.

Gudmestad's manuscript research, fresh analysis of the relevant primary and secondary literature, and new quantitative measures (the last including GIS mapping of riverine irregular warfare events), together leads him to interpret the Mississippi River Squadron's war as passing through four distinct, yet partially overlapping, phases. Overall, it is a useful construct for tracking the evolution of the squadron's assigned roles and range of activities. During Phase One (July 1861-June 1862), the Western Gunboat Flotilla, primarily manned by former bluewater sailors and transfers from the army, directly confronted Confederate vessels, squadrons, and river forts both alone and in conjunction with the army. Phase Two (ending in April 1863), which further perfected army-navy combined operations and essentially marked the complete destruction of organized Confederate naval opposition, was still characterized by attacks on river forts, but the escalation of irregular attacks against Union rear area shipping during that time transformed the main duties of the squadron to supply line protection and escort duties. During Phase Three (May 1863 to April 1864), the naval counterguerrilla war deepened and intensified, with the navy going on the determined offensive against both guerrilla attackers and their presumed civilian supporters (the targeting of the latter leading to much in the way of unjustified acts of plunder and property destruction). Finally, Phase Four, which encompassed the final twelve months of the war, witnessed a steep drop in squadron efficiency and an accompanying rise in Confederate success in ambushing and destroying squadron vessels.

After the harsh reality of sailor life on a closely confined western gunboat set in, it became increasingly difficult to maintain minimum crew strength. Individualistic northern recruits chafed at naval discipline, which was much stricter than that of the army. That, combined with the many personal discomforts and extreme health hazards involved in the shipboard environment (the squadron routinely operated in the most mosquito-infested areas of the Deep South) deterred new recruits and helped produce a persistent manpower gulf. Gudmestad convincingly argues that black recruitment (willing, half-willing, and unwilling) critically addressed that widened gap that emerged during the second and third phases of the squadron's war. His research reveals that blacks and white immigrants enlisted in nearly equal numbers during the second phase, and black men comprised more than one-third of new recruits during the third phase. Military emancipation facilitated much of that Phase Three influx. The Union Army's role in military emancipation across the length and breadth of the lower Mississippi River Valley has been featured in a number of recent studies. By comparison, the western navy's part in the process has been less appreciated in the literature, and Gudmestad's coverage of the topic represents a significant effort toward addressing that imbalance.

A variety of elements involved in Phase Four make it worthy of special attention. Much has been written about the negative impact late-war recruits had on Union Army of the Potomac combat efficiency (although more recent scholarship has strongly contested many of those earlier conclusions), but far less attention has been paid to how much expiring enlistments affected naval operations over the same period. Gudmestad argues that, compared with 1864 Union Army regiments, Mississippi River Squadron vessels experienced far more critically low reenlistment rates. He attributes much of that to discipline requirements, low onboard quality of life (exemplified by the sailor quote serving as the book's title), and, as also mentioned above, lack of ideological commitment. Other contributors to plunging operational efficiency were very heavy desertion rates (perhaps the highest among all Union military formations) and high personnel turnover from disease and disability. There was also extensive turnover in top leadership, with more than a third of squadron vessels having new commanders for the war's final twelve months. In comparison to the two prior phases, the final phase witnessed a sharp plunge in black enlistment (only 8%), a change likely stemming from native-born and immigrant whites taking advantage of highly lucrative late-war enlistment bounties. The result of all of this was a very noticeable drop in overall leadership aggressiveness, far fewer shore expeditions, and a sharp rise in the incidence and success rates of anti-ship attacks from experienced and highly mobile Confederate guerrilla and raiding forces (a prime example of notable Confederate success against qualitatively declining opposition being the Johnsonville, Tennessee disaster of November 1864). However, as Gudemestad also explains, none of those drawbacks, significant as they were, prevented the squadron from carrying out its primary tasks and finishing out the war wearing the crown of victory.

A deftly composed combination of sound synthesis and groundbreaking original research, Robert Gudmestad's The Devil’s Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi River Squadron in the Civil War presents a fresh portrait and reassessment of the Brown Water Navy's war. Elements of this study will enhance and challenge the existing knowledge and perceptions of even the best-read students of the subject matter. The extensive datasets created by Gudmestad's team will also be profoundly useful tools for future researchers. Highly recommended.