Our Little Monitor: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War

by Anna Gibson Holloway, Jonathan W. White

Overview

On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia met in the Battle of Hampton Roads—the first time ironclad vessels would engage each other in combat. For four hours the two ships pummeled one another as thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers and civilians watched from the shorelines. Although the battle ended in a draw, this engagement would change the nature of naval warfare by informing both vessel design and battle tactics. The “wooden walls” of navies around the world suddenly appeared far more vulnerable, and many political and military leaders initiated or accelerated their own ironclad-building programs.

Americans did not initially have much faith in the Monitor. Few believed that this strange little vessel could hold her own against the formidable Confederate ironclad Virginia, which had been built on the bones of the scuttled USS Merrimack in Portsmouth, Virginia. The Virginia, seemingly relentless and unstoppable, had ravaged the U.S. Navy in Hampton Roads on March 8, just before the Monitor arrived. Yet the following day, the “cheesebox on a raft” proved her Union mettle, becoming a national hero in her own right.

For the remainder of the Civil War the Union Navy used dozens of monitor-style vessels on inland waters as well as at sea. But there would always be only one first Monitor, and she became affectionately known to many throughout the nation as “Our Little Monitor.” Her loss off Cape Hatteras on December 31, 1862, was mourned as keenly in the press as the loss of 16 of her men that night.

Using the latest archaeological finds from the USS Monitor Center in Newport News, Virginia, as well as untapped archival material, Anna Gibson Holloway and Jonathan W. White bring “Our Little Monitor” to life once more in this beautifully illustrated volume. In addition to telling her story from conception in 1861 to sinking in 1862, as well as her recent recovery and ongoing restoration, they explain how fighting in this new “machine” changed the experience of her crew and reveal how the Monitor became “the pet of the people”—a vessel celebrated in prints, tokens, and household bric-a-brac; a marketing tool; and a prominent feature in parades, Sanitary Fairs, and politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631012648
Publisher:	Kent State University Press
Publication date:	02/15/2018
Series:	Civil War in the North
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	21 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Anna Gibson Holloway is the former curator of the award-winning USS Monitor Center at The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. She holds a Ph.D. in history from the College of William & Mary and is a leading expert on the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor. Her articles have appeared in American Heritage, America’s Civil War, Civil War Times, and Naval History Magazine. She has also served as the maritime historian for the National Park Service’s Maritime Heritage Program in Washington, D.C., and is currently the Museum Services Director of SEARCH, Inc.

Jonathan W. White is associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and a senior fellow with CNU’s Center for American Studies. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Abraham Lincoln Association, is vice president of the Abraham Lincoln Institute, and serves on the Ford’s Theatre Advisory Council. His recent books include Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln and Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xvii

Part 1 The Monitor in History and Memory

1 The Origins of the CSS Virginia 3

2 "The Navy Department Will Receive Offers…" 25

3 Building the Monitor 37

4 The Battles of Hampton Roads 63

5 "The Pet of the People": The Monitor in Popular Culture 87

6 Aftermath of Battle 113

7 "The Monitor Is No More" 139

8 Discovery and Recovery 153

Part 2 A Documentary Record of the USS Monitor

9 The U.S. Gun Boat Currituck Escorts the Monitor to Hampton Roads, March 3-9, 1862 181

10 Firsthand Accounts of the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8-10, 1862 187

11 President Lincoln's Mailbag, March 10-17, 1862 193

12 An Engineer's View from the Monitor, May 14-June 30, 1862 219

13 Repairing the Monitor: News Reports from October and November 1862 231

14 Two Surgeons Observe the Monitor's Final Moments, December 30, 1862, to January 11, 1863 241

Appendix: Specifications of the Merrimack and Virginia Before and After Conversion 247

Notes 249

Selected Bibliography 273

Index 279

Editorial Reviews

"Holloway and White have . . . done a great service to the historical community in drawing a vast wealth of sources about the ship to the surface.

The authors of “Our Little Monitor” have gone beyond an edited volume and produced an accessible narrative intertwined with primary sources in a way that will give scholars a new depth of detail on circumstances from the ship’ s inception to its recovery, and the general reader gets far more than just a glimpse behind the iron plate." — History: Reviews of New Books

“'Our Little Monitor' would look just as at home with lavishly illustrated coffee table books as it would with other important scholarly volumes. It contains well over a hundred full color, detailed photographs that help really solidify how contemporary observers viewed Ericsson’s Monitor. Nestled amongst the images are lesser known primary accounts of the Battle of Hampton Roads, songs and poems written about the ship and her crew, as well as drawings and paintings that celebrated the 'Greatest Invention of the Civil War.' This book will undoubtedly set a standard for Monitor research in the future and should be included in any serious historiography. It ought to be considered a “must” for any serious student of the American Civil War and would be an entertaining read to even those with just a casual interest." — Hampton Roads Naval Museum

From the Publisher