Ethics and Issues Studying the Naval Civil War

Unsurprisingly, most of what I research focuses on naval activity of the United States Civil War. Having spent time on active duty, I frequently see myself doing the same work that sailors did more than 160 years ago. Technology has changed and ships have evolved, but I have traversed the same water space that Civil War sailors sailed and steamed through. The logs I filled out are eerily similar to those completed by officers on the blockade. Studying this subject matter has resulted in a pair of issues I am constantly struggling with regarding terminology and content.

Sailors have a language of their own. I have been married to my wife Brittany for nearly thirteen years now, and she takes pride in having acclimated herself to a significant amount of it all. Like technology and ships, some of that language has changed over time, but much remains in place from the Civil War era and before.

This nautical language is my first recurring issue. My knowledge from the navy allows a deeper understanding of the collections of reports, logs, and letters written by maritime personnel. Transposing that to a more general audience is difficult, to say the least. I am constantly torn about what terms to use, which words to quote, and determining what needs more elaboration to help an audience understand.

Too much editing can truly remove the original intent and thoughts of a primary account. Too little editing can make it so someone who is not a nautical expert has absolutely no clue what they are looking at. I like to feel I walk a fine line between these two, but honestly, I am never quite sure. One way I try to remedy this is that when I have a book project undergoing editing, I always try sending it to at least one person who is weaker on the naval side of the conflict. They serve as a valuable sanity check that what I am writing it not too “in the weeds.”

The other dilemma I often struggle with is what content I find myself naturally researching. Besides my personal connection to naval matters, time has given me a greater appreciation of naval activity, both from the Civil War era and now. By their nature, naval action is multi-disciplinary. Sailors are part of the armed forces and acted in exploration teams globally and into outer space. Naval officers must be part warrior, part diplomat (both in foreign ports and in encountering foreign ships at sea), and part lawyer. Ship captains must be well versed engineers, weapons experts, navigators, and mathematicians.

Much of my published work, especially earlier in my career, gravitates on the Confederate Navy. I ran the numbers. Of my three currently published books, two expressly focus on Confederate naval activity. Of the 27 articles I have published in peer-reviewed journals and magazines, 15 specifically focus only on the Confederate Navy. I often ask if I am too focused on one side of the conflict at the expense of excluding Federal points of view.

The same thought could also be applied to a focus predominately on naval matters at the expense of other perspectives, or vice versa. When I read secondary books, a common internal complaint I make is that authors write from an army point-of-view at the expense of the navy. They focus on military sources, but then cite other secondary works when it comes to naval matters.

To use a generic example, someone might study Sherman’s advance on Savannah, Georgia, in late 1864, using the most minute letters and diaries from soldiers in Sherman’s forces spread across archives, but will never go past citing the Official Naval Records of the War of the Rebellion when covering how naval forces supported that advance.

I often wonder if I do the same thing in reverse: diving deep into naval archives while ignoring critical resources from other backgrounds, such as the military or civilian populations. Or, am I focused too much on Civil War naval activity while not spending as much time on global naval activity at the same time, or on other US naval activity in other eras.

Sailors were just one part of the Civil War (and going by numbers of people involved a smaller part proportionally). Nonetheless, I feel that their wartime activity proved vital to both sides. Federal warships enforced the blockade and helped clear the Mississippi River – realizing the Anaconda Plan – while also assaulting ports and showing the world that the United States was not abandoning international interests.

Simultaneously, the Confederate Navy’s raiders prowled the oceans in a war on commerce, while its ironclads guarded ports that took years to clear (some by Federal armies marching from inland because US warships did not break through coastal positions). My hope is that my own research efforts can help shed more light on these wartime efforts.

Part of a series.