Hunley's Role In The Civil War

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Historians have focused on the land war of the American Civil War in understanding how and why the North won the war, with the naval aspect of the war playing a supporting role. What has been covered has been the first interaction between ironclad ships, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia, or the H. L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine. What has not been covered is how the role of the United States navy influenced the outcome of the American Civil War through not only through military means but also economical means. It is through the lenses of economics and military strategy that help us understand how the American naval strategies and technology modified to influence the end of the American Civil War through economic starvation of the Confederacy. …show more content…

The first is the battle between the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia. Historians and the public have analyzed this encounter between the two ironclad ships. With the raising of the Confederate submarine Hunley, there has been activity through the archeological lens as well as military history lens trying to ascertain what happened during the night of February 17, 1864. Much of the naval history of the Civil War focus on the engagements such as the Battle of Cherbourg where the USS Kearsarge sank the Confederate raider CSS Alabama off of the coast of France or the battles where the navy supported the infantry.
With the raising of the Hunley, there is a renewed interest in naval actions of the Civil War, and the economic relationship with the navy is an important. The economic impact from the American naval Blockade forced shows how the evolution of strategy and technology evolved to keep an effective blockade in the attempt to strangle the Confederacy economically.
At the beginning of the war, the Union navy had at its disposal 42 ships to patrol 3,000 miles of coastline. The navy, in attempt to streamline and eliminate the logistics problems from a navy unready for a war, took the first step in strategy by creating a Blockade Board in order to streamline the control of blockading the