The First Battle of Memphis was a naval battle fought on the Mississippi River immediately north of the city of Memphis, Tennessee on June 6, 1862, during the American Civil War. The engagement was witnessed by many of the citizens of Memphis. It resulted in a crushing defeat for the Confederate forces, and marked the virtual eradication of a Confederate naval presence on the river. Despite the lopsided outcome, the Union Army failed to grasp its strategic significance. Its primary historical importance is that it was the last time civilians with no prior military experience were permitted to command ships in combat. As such, it is a milestone in the development of professionalism in the United States Navy.[1]
The defending Confederates closely matched the advancing federal force in raw numbers, with eight rebel vessels opposing nine Union gunboats and rams, but the fighting qualities of the former were far inferior. Each was armed with only one or two guns, of a light caliber that would be ineffective against the armor of the gunboats. The primary weapon of each was its reinforced prow, which was intended to be used in ramming opponents.[2]
The Confederate rams were distinguished by a unique feature of their defense against enemy shot. Their engines and other interior spaces were protected by a double bulkhead of heavy timbers, covered on the outer surface by a layer of railroad iron. The gap between the bulkheads, a space of 22in (56cm), was packed with cotton.[3] Although the cotton was the least important part of the armor, it caught the public's attention, and the boats came to be called "cottonclads". Later in the war, ships' crews were often protected from small-arms fire by bales of cotton placed in exposed positions, and these vessels were also referred to as "cottonclads". They differed, however, from the originals of the category.[2]
The federal force consisted of five gunboats, four of which were known semi-officially as "Eads gunboats", after their builder, James Buchanan Eads, but more commonly as "Pook turtles", after their designer, Samuel M. Pook, and their strange appearance.[4] The fifth gunboat, flagship Benton, was also a product of the Eads shipyards, but was converted from a civilian craft. Each of these vessels carried from 13–16 guns. The other four vessels were naval rams from the United States Ram Fleet. They had no armament whatever, aside from the small arms carried by the officers. All of the rams had been converted from civilian riverboats and had no common design.[2][5]
The Confederate arrangement was even worse. The cottonclads were about half of a group of fourteen river steamers that had been seized at New Orleans and converted into rams to defend that city. Known as the "River Defense Fleet", it was split in two when the Confederate holdings on the river became threatened from both the north and the Gulf of Mexico. Six were retained below New Orleans to face the fleet of David G. Farragut, while eight were sent up to Memphis to block the Union descent down the river. Sending them this far north did not violate their original purpose, as Memphis was regarded as a shield for New Orleans. The northern (Memphis) section was commanded overall by James E. Montgomery, a riverboat captain in civilian life. The other boats were also commanded by former civilian riverboat captains, selected by Montgomery, and with no military training. Once under way, Montgomery's command ceased, and the rams operated independently. The futility of this arrangement was recognized immediately by military men, but their protests were disregarded.[8] Furthermore, the captains would neither learn how to handle the guns themselves, nor assign crew members to the task, so gun crews had to be drawn from the Confederate Army. The gunners were not integrated into the crews, but remained subject to the orders of their army officers.[9]
The Total Annihilation of the Rebel Fleet by the Federal Fleet under Commodore Davis. On the Morning of June 6, 1862, off Memphis, Tenn. CSS General Beauregard (center foreground) is being rammed by the federal ram Monarch. At left are the disabled federal ram Queen of the West and the Confederate ships General Sterling Price and Little Rebel.
As a result of the federal victory at Corinth, the railroads that linked Memphis with the eastern part of the Confederacy had been cut, severely reducing the strategic importance of the city. Therefore, in early June 1862, Memphis and its nearby forts were abandoned by the rebel army. Most of the garrison were sent to join units elsewhere, including Vicksburg and only a small rear guard was left to make a token resistance. The River Defense Fleet was also to have retreated to Vicksburg, but it could not get enough coal in Memphis. Unable to flee when the federal fleet appeared on June 6, Montgomery and his captains had to decide whether to fight, or scuttle their boats. They chose to fight, steaming out in the early morning to meet the advancing flotilla and the rams trailing behind it, with Memphis citizens cheering them on.[10]
The battle started with an exchange of gunfire at long range, the federal gunboats setting up a line of battle across the river and firing their rear guns at the cottonclads coming up to meet them as they entered the battle stern first. Two of the four rams advanced beyond the line of the gunboats and rammed or otherwise disrupted the movements of their opponents; the other rams misinterpreted their orders and did not enter the battle at all. With the federal rams and gunboats not coordinating their movements and the Confederate vessels operating independently, the battle soon was reduced to a melee. It is agreed by all that the ram flagship, Queen of the West, initiated hostilities by slamming into CSS Colonel Lovell. She was then rammed in turn by one or more of the remaining cottonclads. Ellet was at this time wounded by a pistol shot in his knee, thereby becoming the only casualty on the Union side. (In the hospital, he contracted measles, the childhood disease that killed some 5,000 soldiers during the war. The combination of the disease and the debilitation caused by his wound was too great, and he died on June 21.[11]) The remainder of the battle is obscured by more than the fog of war. Several eyewitness accounts are available; however, they are mutually contradictory to a greater degree than usual.[12] All that is certain is that at the end of the battle, all but one of the cottonclads were either destroyed or captured, and one Yankee boat, Queen of the West, was disabled. The sole boat to escape, CSS General Earl Van Dorn, fled to the protection of the Yazoo River, just north of Vicksburg.
Results
The battle, which took less than two hours in the early morning hours of June 6, resulted in the immediate surrender of the city of Memphis to federal authority by noon that day.
The Confederate casualties totaled approximately 100 killed or wounded and another 150 taken prisoner. The Union forces captured and repaired CSS General Price, CSS General Bragg, CSS Sumter, and CSS Little Rebel, and added them to the Mississippi River Squadron.[13]
The battle of Memphis was, aside from the later appearance of the ironclad CSS Arkansas, the final challenge to the federal thrust down the Mississippi River against Vicksburg. The river was now open down to that city, which was already besieged by Farragut's ships, but the federal army authorities did not grasp the strategic importance of the fact for nearly another six months. Not until November 1862 would the Union Army under Ulysses S. Grant attempt to complete the opening of the river.[2]
The poor performance of the River Defense Fleet, both at Memphis and at the earlier Battle of New Orleans, was the final demonstration that naval operations had to be commanded by trained professionals subject to military discipline.[2] The Ellet Rams remained in federal service, but they had no other opportunity for combat of the sort for which they were intended. They were soon transformed into an amphibious raiding body, the Mississippi Marine Brigade (with no connection to the United States Marine Corps), led by Ellet's brother, Lieutenant Colonel (later Brigadier General) Alfred W. Ellet. The demand for increased professionalism also resulted in the elimination of privateering,[14] although the River Defense Fleet was not composed of privateers in the usual meaning of the term.
The battle remains a cautionary tale, demonstrating the ill effects of a poor command structure. It is also one of only two purely naval battles of the war,[citation needed] excluding single-ship actions, and took place 500mi (800km) from the nearest open water. The other was the Battle of Plum Point Bend, also on the Mississippi.
Another civil war military engagement took place in Memphis, namely the Second Battle of Memphis in April 1864, when Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest led a nighttime cavalry raid on Memphis with the intent of freeing Confederate prisoners and capturing Union generals encamped there. The raid failed in both goals, but forced the Union Army to guard the area more diligently.
The Battle of Mobile Bay of August 5, 1864, was a naval and land engagement of the American Civil War in which a Union fleet commanded by Rear Admiral David G. Farragut, assisted by a contingent of soldiers, attacked a smaller Confederate fleet led by Admiral Franklin Buchanan and three forts that guarded the entrance to Mobile Bay: Morgan, Gaines and Powell. Farragut's order of "Damn the torpedoes! Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!" became famous in paraphrase, as "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"
CSS Manassas, formerly the steam icebreaker Enoch Train, was built in 1855 by James O. Curtis as a twin-screw towboat at Medford, Massachusetts. A New Orleans commission merchant, Captain John A. Stevenson, acquired her for use as a privateer after she was captured by another privateer CSS Ivy. Her fitting out as Manassas was completed at Algiers, Louisiana; her conversion to a ram of a radically modern design made her the first ironclad ship built for the Confederacy.
The USS Queen of the West was a sidewheel steamer ram ship and the flagship of the United States Ram Fleet and the Mississippi Marine Brigade. It was built at Cincinnati, Ohio in 1854. It served as a commercial steamer until purchased by Colonel Charles Ellet Jr. in 1862 and converted for use as a ram ship. The ship operated in conjunction with the Mississippi River Squadron during the Union brown-water navy battle against the Confederate River Defense Fleet for control of the Mississippi River and its tributaries during the American Civil War.
Charles Rivers Ellet was a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He served in the United States Ram Fleet under his father Charles Ellet, Jr. and as commanding officer of the ram fleet as part of the Mississippi Marine Brigade under his uncle Alfred W. Ellet. He commanded the ram ships USS Queen of the West, USS Switzerland, USS Lancaster and USS Monarch during the brown-water navy battle for control of the Mississippi River and its tributaries as part of the Vicksburg Campaign from 1862 to 1863.
Alfred Washington Ellet was a brigadier general in the Union Army who commanded the United States Ram Fleet and the Mississippi Marine Brigade during the American Civil War.
Laurent Millaudon was a wooden side-wheel river steamboat launched at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1856 operating in the New Orleans, Louisiana, area, and captained by W. S. Whann. At the beginning of the American Civil War she was taken into service by the Confederate Navy as CSS General Sterling Price. On 6 June 1862, she was sunk at the Battle of Memphis. She was raised and repaired by the Union army, and on 16 June 1862 was moved into Union service as USS General Price and served until the end of the war.
The United States Ram Fleet was a Union Army unit of steam powered ram ships during the American Civil War. The unit was independent of the Union Army and Navy and reported directly to the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. The ram fleet operated in coordination with the Mississippi River Squadron during the Union brown-water navy battle against the Confederate River Defense Fleet for control of the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
USS Monarch was a United States Army sidewheel ram that saw service in the American Civil War as part of the United States Ram Fleet and the Mississippi Marine Brigade. She operated on the Mississippi River and Yazoo River during 1862 and 1863.
The Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip was the decisive battle for possession of New Orleans in the American Civil War. The two Confederate forts on the Mississippi River south of the city were attacked by a Union Navy fleet. As long as the forts could keep the Federal forces from moving on the city, it was safe, but if they fell or were bypassed, there were no fall-back positions to impede the Union advance.
USS Mound City was a City-class ironclad gunboat built for service on the Mississippi River and its tributaries in the American Civil War. Originally commissioned as part of the Union Army's Western Gunboat Flotilla, she remained in that service until October 1862. Then the flotilla was transferred to the Navy and she became part of the Mississippi River Squadron, where she remained until the end of the war.
CSS Colonel Lovell was a cotton-clad ram ship of the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War
Seth Ledyard Phelps was an American naval officer, and in later life, a politician and diplomat. Phelps received his first commission in United States Navy as a midshipman aboard the famous USS Independence. He served patrolling the coast of West Africa guarding against slavers. During the Mexican–American War he served on gunboats, giving support to Winfield Scott's army, and later served in the Mediterranean and Caribbean squadrons.
The Mississippi Marine Brigade was a Union Army amphibious unit which included the United States Ram Fleet and operated from November 1862 to August 1864 during the American Civil War. The brigade was established to act swiftly against Confederate forces operating near the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The brigade was commanded by Brigadier General Alfred W. Ellet and operated in coordination with the Mississippi River Squadron during the Union brown-water navy battle against the Confederate River Defense Fleet and land based forces. The brigade was independent of the Union Army and Navy and reported directly to the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. Despite the name, it was never part of the United States Marine Corps.
Little Rebel was a cotton-clad ram that had been converted from a Mississippi River steamer to serve as the flagship of the Confederate River Defense Fleet in the American Civil War. Sent from New Orleans to defend against the Federal descent of the Mississippi, she was among the force that engaged vessels of the Union Army's Western Gunboat Flotilla at the Battle of Plum Point Bend on May 10, 1862. On June 6, she again was involved in an action with the Federal gunboats, this time at the Battle of Memphis. In the battle, a shot from a Federal gun pierced her boiler, disabling her, and she was then pushed aground by the Federal ram USS Monarch and captured.
USS Sumter was a 525-ton sidewheel paddle steamer captured by the Union Navy during the Union blockade of the American Civil War.
The River Defense Fleet was a set of fourteen vessels in Confederate service, intended to assist in the defense of New Orleans in the early days of the American Civil War. All were merchant ships or towboats that were seized by order of the War Department in Richmond and converted into warships by arming each with one or two guns, protecting their engines by an interior bulkhead, and strengthening their bows so they could be used as rams. Although they were nominally a part of the Confederate States Army, all of their officers and most of their crews were civilians. A portion of the fleet was retained in the south part of the Mississippi River and a portion was sent north to defend against Union movement from the north.
The Pook Turtles, or City-class gunboats to use their semi-official name, were war vessels intended for service on the Mississippi River during the American Civil War. They were also sometimes referred to as "Eads gunboats." The labels are applied to seven vessels of uniform design built from the keel up in Carondelet, Missouri shipyards owned by James Buchanan Eads. Eads was a wealthy St. Louis industrialist who risked his fortune in support of the Union.
CSS General M. Jeff Thompson was a warship which served in the River Defense Fleet of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Purchased in January 1862, the vessel was operated by the Confederate States Army and named after M. Jeff Thompson, an officer in the Missouri State Guard. She was equipped with a ram and armored as a cottonclad. General M. Jeff Thompson participated in the Battle of Plum Point Bend in May 1862, before being sunk on June 6 in the Battle of Memphis. Her wreck remained on the floor of the Mississippi River until it was removed by a snagboat in July 1867; it had caused a shipwreck about six months earlier when another vessel struck it.
CSS Ivy was a sidewheel steamer and privateer purchased by Commodore Lawrence Rousseau for service with the Confederate States Navy, and chosen by Commodore George Hollins for his Mosquito Fleet. The Mosquito Fleet was a group of riverboats converted to gunboats, and used to defend the Mississippi River in the area of New Orleans during the American Civil War.
References
↑ Abbreviations used in this article: ORA – War of the Rebellion; a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 70 volumes in four series; Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1880–1901. ORN – Official records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, 30 volumes in two series; Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1894–1922.
↑ At least five independent accounts of the battle exist: ORN I, v. 23, pp. 119–121, 125–135, 136–138, 139–140; ORA I, v. 10/1, pp. 912–913, 925–927, with some repetitions.
Johnson, Robert Underwood, and Buel, Clarence Clough, eds. Battles and leaders of the Civil War. Secaucus, New Jersey, n.d.; reprint ed., New York: Century, 1887, 1888.
Luraghi, Raimondo.A history of the Confederate Navy (translated by Paolo E. Coletta). Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1996.
Musicant, Ivan. Divided waters: the naval history of the Civil War. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Robinson, William Morrison Jr. The Confederate privateers. Yale University, 1928. Reprint, Univ. of South Carolina, 1990.
Scharf, J. Thomas. History of the Confederate States Navy from its organization to the surrender of its last vessel. New York: Gramercy, 1996; reprint ed., New York: Rogers and Sherwood, 1887.
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Charles Henry Davis 
James E. Montgomery
