Book Review: “Digging All Night and Fighting All Day”: The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865

“Digging All Night and Fighting All Day”: The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865. By Paul Brueske. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2024. Hardcover, 336 pp. $32.95

Reviewed by Aaron Stoyack

The battle of Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864 closed off the harbor to blockade running, but the city still held importance as a transportation nexus. In the opening weeks of 1865, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ordered Maj. Gen. Edward Canby to operate against strategic locations in Alabama, including Mobile. Confederate defenders at the city’s Spanish Fort and nearby redoubts held their ground for weeks despite numbering barely one-tenth of the Federal forces. In these actions, soldiers on both sides lived through the most intense labor, barrages, and engagements of their careers.

Paul Brueske, author of the recently published Digging All Night and Fighting All Day”: The Civil War Siege of Spanish Fort and the Mobile Campaign, 1865, admits in his epilogue: “The siege of Spanish Fort did not end the war. It did not turn out to be a major turning point or a regionally strategic battle.” (227) However, Brueske argues that while the siege may not have been of immense tactical significance, its circumstances were never forgotten by the gallant attackers and defenders. Additionally, in the book’s preface, Brueske discusses the existing historiography, and that Spanish Fort appears briefly in studies encompassing the Civil War history of Alabama and Mobile. The author determines that the operations around Spanish Fort deserve a singularly focused publication.

Brueske wastes no words in the concise introduction and opening chapter, which provides brief backgrounds on preceding thrusts against the city. The remaining 208 pages are devoted solely to the siege, giving the narrative room to breathe without becoming bogged down in minutia. Chapters range from ten to twenty pages, making this work a quick read. It is also an easy one, as subheadings delineate between sections. This immediately makes the ensuing texts’ subjects, (Unionists or Confederates), clear.

Artillery is one subject in which Brueske’s analysis shines. Descriptions of pieces from massive 120-pounder seacoast guns to man-portable mortars paint vivid pictures without sacrificing the narrative flow. Artillery is pivotal to the siege, with careful engineering and battery construction outweighing the contributions of infantry to the Federal victory.

The infantrymen, however, receive ample attention. The book amplifies the voices of the men on the ground, even while in camp and on the march while keeping the discussion of army politicking to a minimum. These accounts are replete with humorous tales of misadventure, ironic twists of fate, and insight into how the soldiers adapted to their challenging environment.

Academically or genealogically inclined readers will find their needs met by fourteen appendices. In addition to orders of battle, researchers can find information about those killed or captured, sunken vessels, and the answers to logistical, archaeological, and preservation-related queries.

One shortcoming is a relative lack of maps and their uneven distribution. A few are bunched toward the beginning and end, sometimes compelling the reader to flip back several chapters to orient themselves. Of course, those maps show lines held weeks before, which differ from the current positions.

The above hardly detracts from the book’s value, though. Brueske gives voices to the overlooked men toiling during the siege and reveals how the coastal environment shaped their tactics. The fast-paced narrative follows the defeated Confederates to their surrender, finally shedding light on this oft-forgotten offensive almost 160 years later.