Lot - CIVIL WAR USN ENSIGN SMITH PATENT SHOULDER STRAPS

Rare Civil War United States Navy Set of Ensign "Smith's Patent" metal border, shoulder straps. The straps shows an anchor and rope embellishment against a background of blue wool felt and the outer edge features a plated metal border. Approximately 4 1/8" x 1-5/8" and in near mint condition.Personnel:During the war, the Union navy had a total of 84,415 personnel. The Union navy suffered 6,233 casualties, with 4,523 deaths from all causes. 2,112 Union sailors were killed by enemy action, and 2,411 died by disease or injury. The Union navy suffered at least 1,710 personnel wounded in action, injured, or disabled by disease. The Union navy started the war with 8,000 men, 7,600 enlisted men of all ratings and some 1,200 commissioned officers. The number of hands in the Union navy grew five times its original strength at the war's outbreak. As with many pre-war sailors, most of these new hands were volunteers who desired to serve in the navy temporarily rather than make the navy a career. Most of these volunteers were rated as "Land's Men" by recruiters meaning they had little or no experience at sea in their civilian lives. However, many sailors from the United States pre-war merchant marine joined the navy, and they were often given higher ratings due to their background and experience. A key part of the Union navy's recruiting efforts was the offer of higher pay than a volunteer for the Union army would receive and the promise of greater freedom or the opportunity to see more of the country and world. When the Draft was introduced, the Navy tried to recruit volunteers by offering service at sea as a better-paying alternative to being drafted into the Army; this incentive was especially meant to attract professional sailors who could be drafted the same as any other civilian and would rather see combat in an environment they were more familiar with. Sailors: Union sailors differed from their counterparts on land, soldiers. The sailors were typically unemployed, working-class men from urban areas, including recent immigrants. Unlike soldiers, few were farmers. They seldom enlisted to preserve the Union, end slavery, or display their courage; instead, many were coerced into joining. According to Michael Bennett: The typical Union sailor was a hard, pragmatic, and cynical man who bore little patience for patriotism, reform, and religion. He drank too much, fought too much, and prayed too little. He preferred adventure to stability and went for quick and lucrative jobs rather than steady and slow employ under the tightening strictures of the new market economy. He was rough, dirty, and profane. Out of date before his time, he was aggressively masculine in a Northern society bent on gentling men. Overall, Union sailors proved less committed to emerging Northern values and were less ideological than soldiers for whom the broader issues of freedom, market success, and constitutional government proved constant touchstones during the war. Nevertheless, Union navy sailors and marines were awarded 325 Medals of Honor for Civil War valor, with immigrants receiving 39 percent of the awards: Ireland (50), England (25), and Scotland (13). Before the Civil War, the U.S. Navy had never prohibited African Americans from serving. However, regulations in place since 1840 had required them to be limited to no more than 5% of all enlisted personnel. Thus unlike the army, the Union navy did not prohibit African Americans from serving at the start of the war and was racially integrated. Approximately 10,000, or around 17%, of Union navy sailors were black; seven of them were awarded the Medal of Honor. The tension between white and "contraband" (black) sailors was high and remained serious during the war. Bennett argues: For the most part, white sailors rejected contrabands as sailors. They did so owing to a tangled mix of racial prejudices, unflattering stereotypes that equated sailors with enslaved people, and working-class people's fears of blacks as labor competition. The combination of all of these tensions eventually triggered a social warreferred to as "frictions" by sailorsas whites racially harassed, sometimes violently, formerly enslaved people serving alongside them. Blockade: The blockade of all ports in the seceded states was proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln on April 19, 1861, one of the first acts of his administration following the bombardment of Fort Sumter. It existed mostly on paper in the early days of the conflict but became increasingly tighter as it continued. Although the blockade was never perfect, Southern exports of cotton fell 95 percent. As a result, the South had to restructure itself to emphasize food and munition production for internal use. This also contributed to the Confederacy's isolation and hastened its currency's devaluation. For administration of the blockade, the Navy was divided into four squadrons: the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, East Gulf, and West Gulf Blockading Squadrons. (A fifth squadron, the Mississippi River Squadron, was created in late 1862 to operate in the Vicksburg campaign and its consequences; it was not involved with the blockade.) Invasion: Two early invasions of the South were meant primarily to improve the blockade, leading to further actions. Following the capture of Cape Hatteras, much of eastern North Carolina was soon occupied by the Union army. The easy success in North Carolina was not repeated after the seizure of Port Royal in South Carolina, as determined resistance prevented the significant expansion of the beachhead there. Charleston did not fall until the last days of the war. The later capture of Fernandina, Florida, was intended from the start to provide a southern anchor for the Atlantic blockade. It led to the capture of Jacksonville and the southern sounds of Georgia, but this was not part of a larger scheme of conquest. It reflected mostly a decision by the Confederate government to retire from the coast, except for a few major ports. Late in the war, Mobile Bay was taken by fleet action, but there was no immediate attempt to take Mobile itself. The capture of New Orleans was only marginally connected with the blockade, as New Orleans was already well sealed off. However, it was important for several other reasons. The passage of the forts below the city by Farragut's fleet showed that fixed fortifications could not defend against a steam-powered fleet, so it was crucial for the emergence of the Navy as equal to the Army in national defense. It also demonstrated the possibility of attacking the Confederacy along the line of the Mississippi River. It thus was an important, even vital, predecessor of the campaign that ultimately split the Confederacy. Finally, it cast doubt on the ability of the Confederacy to defend itself, thus giving European nations reason not to grant diplomatic recognition. The final important naval action of the war was the second assault on Fort Fisher at the mouth of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. It was one of the few actions of the war on the coast in which the Army and Navy cooperated fully.[38] The capture of the fort sealed off Wilmington, the last Confederate port to remain open. The death of the Confederacy followed in a little more than three months.

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Lot 22

CIVIL WAR USN ENSIGN SMITH PATENT SHOULDER STRAPS

CIVIL WAR USN ENSIGN SMITH PATENT SHOULDER STRAPS

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