First Battle of Memphis

• 1. Introduction

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  The First Battle of Memphis was fought on the 6th of June, 1862, within sight of the city's residents, who had come to the riverbank to watch. Eight Confederate vessels steamed out to meet a federal fleet of nine. Those boats were improvised craft whose captains had spent their careers on the commercial river trade, not in any military service. Naval history records this battle as the final occasion when men without professional military training were permitted to command warships in combat. How that came to be is the first of several questions the battle raises. How a clear federal victory could go unused for months is another.

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• 2. Cotton and Iron

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  The 22-inch gap between the Confederate vessels' timber bulkheads was packed with cotton. Outside those bulkheads, the hulls were covered in railroad iron. It was the cotton that caught the public's imagination, and the boats became known as cottonclads. In practical military terms, the cotton was the least effective part of the armor. The heavy timbers and the iron were what protected the engines and crew from enemy shot.

  Each cottonclad carried only one or two guns, of a caliber too light to pierce the armor of the federal gunboats. Their intended weapon was the ram itself: a reinforced prow meant to be driven at full speed into an opponent's hull. These vessels had begun life as fourteen river steamers, seized at New Orleans and converted into rams to protect that city. Six stayed below New Orleans to face David G. Farragut's fleet. Eight were sent north to Memphis.

  The federal fleet's gunboats each carried between 13 and 16 guns. Four of the nine federal vessels were informally known as Pook turtles. The name came from their designer, Samuel M. Pook, and their odd silhouette. Their builder was James Buchanan Eads, whose name attached to the vessels in semi-official usage as well. A fifth gunboat served as flagship; it too came from the Eads yards, though converted from a civilian craft. The remaining four federal vessels were rams from the United States Ram Fleet. They had been converted from civilian riverboats and carried no artillery at all.

  The eight cottonclads sent to Memphis were placed under the overall command of James E. Montgomery. His professional life had been spent navigating the commercial river trade, not the military.

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• 3. No Common Authority

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  Flag Officer Charles H. Davis commanded the federal gunboats on the Mississippi River. The four rams alongside them answered to a separate authority entirely. Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr., who led the rams, reported directly to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in Washington. Davis, by contrast, reported to Major General Henry W. Halleck. The gunboats were formally part of the United States Army, though staffed by naval officers. The rams were a separate organization. There was no shared command between the two forces outside of Washington.

  Not one of the men commanding Confederate vessels at Memphis held military rank. Their training had been in river navigation, not warfare. Professional soldiers who observed the arrangements protested immediately, but their objections were disregarded. The captains also refused to operate the guns themselves and would not assign crew members to the task. Gun crews had to be borrowed from the Confederate Army. Those soldiers remained subject to their army officers rather than the boat captains. Each vessel went into battle with a chain of command that split the moment guns were needed.

  The moment the Confederate fleet got under way, Montgomery's authority over his captains would cease. Each boat would operate on its own judgment. The morning of the 6th of June would put both command structures to a test neither was built to pass.

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• 4. The Memphis Melee

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  A federal victory at Corinth had severed the railroads linking Memphis to the eastern Confederacy before the battle even began. By early June 1862, the rebel army had abandoned Memphis and its nearby forts. Most of the garrison was sent south, including forces bound for Vicksburg. A small rear guard remained. The River Defense Fleet had orders to retreat to Vicksburg as well, but could not secure enough coal.

  When the federal fleet appeared on the 6th of June, Montgomery and his captains faced a decision: fight or scuttle their boats. They chose to fight. The cottonclads steamed out in the early morning, and the citizens of Memphis cheered from shore.

  The federal gunboats formed a line of battle across the river, entering the engagement stern-first and firing their rear guns at the approaching Confederate vessels. Two of the four Union rams advanced past the gunboat line and drove at the cottonclads. The other two misread their orders and held back entirely. Without coordination between the rams and the gunboats, and with the Confederate vessels each acting alone, the fight became a melee.

  The Union flagship rammed CSS Colonel Lovell. Colonel Ellet himself was struck by a pistol shot in the knee during the chaos, becoming the only casualty on the Union side. Taken to hospital, he contracted measles, a childhood disease that had by that point killed some 5,000 soldiers during the war. The wound and the illness together were too much. Ellet died on the 21st of June.

  Only one Confederate vessel avoided destruction or capture. CSS General Earl Van Dorn fled south to the Yazoo River, near Vicksburg. Memphis surrendered to federal authority by noon that same day. Confederate casualties totaled approximately 100 killed or wounded, with another 150 taken prisoner. Federal forces captured four vessels in condition to be repaired: CSS General Price, CSS General Bragg, CSS Sumter, and CSS Little Rebel. All four were added to the Mississippi River Squadron. The river above Vicksburg was now uncontested. Vicksburg itself was already under pressure from Farragut's fleet below.

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• 5. The Road to Vicksburg

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  David G. Farragut's fleet had been operating below Vicksburg since before the Memphis battle was fought. With the river now cleared above the city as well, Vicksburg was flanked by federal naval forces on both sides. Federal army authorities failed to recognize the strategic importance of this alignment. Not until November 1862 would Ulysses S. Grant attempt to complete the opening of the Mississippi River. That delay stretched to nearly six months after the battle.

  The only remaining Confederate challenge on the river came later from the ironclad CSS Arkansas. Its defeat resolved what Memphis had started. Aside from that appearance, the First Battle of Memphis was the last obstacle to the federal drive toward Vicksburg.

  This engagement was one of only two purely naval fleet battles of the entire Civil War. The other was the Battle of Plum Point Bend, also on the Mississippi. What made Memphis unusual was its distance from the sea: the combatants fought 500 miles from the nearest open water.

  The river had been decided at Memphis. The question of who should be trusted to fight on it remained open.

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• 6. A New Kind of Navy

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  The Ellet Rams remained in federal service after the battle. They had no further occasion for the kind of fighting for which they had been built. They were reorganized into the Mississippi Marine Brigade, an amphibious raiding force. Charles Ellet Jr.'s brother, Alfred W. Ellet, assumed command as Lieutenant Colonel; he was later promoted to Brigadier General. The brigade had no connection to the United States Marine Corps despite its name.

  The River Defense Fleet's cumulative performance, at New Orleans and at Memphis, drove the demand for professionalism that ended civilian naval command. This same demand contributed to the elimination of privateering. The River Defense Fleet was not composed of privateers in the traditional sense of that term. The First Battle of Memphis was the last time men with no prior military experience were permitted to command ships in active combat.

  In April 1864, Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest led a nighttime cavalry raid on Memphis. His aim was to free Confederate prisoners and capture Union generals who were encamped in the city. The raid failed on both objectives. Memphis required a permanent, heavier guard from that point forward.

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