{"title":"Neil P Chatelain","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"defending-the-arteries-of-rebellion-book-neil-p-chatelain-9781611216035","title":"Defending the Arteries of Rebellion","description":"Most studies of the Mississippi River focus on Union campaigns to open and control it, overlooking Southern attempts to stop them. Now in paperback, Neil Chatelain's Defending the Arteries of Rebellion: Confederate Naval Operations in the Mississippi River Valley, 1861-1865 is the other side of the story - the first modern full-length treatment of inland naval operations from the Confederate perspective.     Confederate President Jefferson Davis realized the value of the Mississippi River and its entire valley, which he described as the \"great artery of the Confederacy.\" This key internal highway controlled the fledgling nation's transportation network. Davis and Stephen Mallory, his secretary of the navy, knew these vital logistical paths had to be held, and that they offered potential highways of invasion for Union warships and armies to stab their way deep into the heart of the Confederacy.     To protect these arteries of rebellion, Southern strategy called for crafting a ring of powerful fortifications supported by naval forces. Different military branches, however, including the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and Revenue Service, as well as civilian privateers and even state naval forces, competed for scarce resources to operate their own vessels. A lack of industrial capacity, coupled with a dearth of skilled labor, further complicated Confederate efforts and guaranteed the South's grand vision of deploying dozens of river gunboats and powerful ironclads would never be fully realized.     Despite these limitations, the Southern war machine introduced numerous innovations and alternate defenses including the Confederacy's first operational ironclad, the first successful use of underwater torpedoes, widespread use of Army-Navy joint operations, and the employment of extensive river obstructions. When the Mississippi came under complete Union control in 1863, Confederate efforts shifted to its many tributaries, where a bitter and deadly struggle ensued to control these internal lifelines. Despite a lack of ships, material, personnel, funding, and unified organization, the Confederacy fought desperately and scored many localized tactical victories - often won at great cost - but failed at the strategic level.     Chatelain, a former Navy Surface Warfare Officer, grounds his study in extensive archival and firsthand accounts, official records, and a keen understanding of terrain and geography. The result is a fast-paced, well-crafted, and endlessly fascinating account that is sure to please the most discriminating student of the Civil War.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49744866017553,"sku":"NGR9781611216035","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50317943013649,"sku":"CIN1611216036VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1611216036.jpg?v=1750763253"},{"product_id":"fought-like-devils-book-neil-p-chatelain-9781496915313","title":"Fought Like Devils","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn often overlooked aspect of the American Civil War was the effort by the Confederate Navy to defend the Mississippi River in 1861 and 1862. Confederate officials struggled to build a navy from nothing, converting steamers into gunboats while working to build several ironclad warships from the keel up along the banks of the Mississippi River. The CS McRae, originally a Mexican ship involved in the Reform War, was among the vessels acquired by the Confederacy at the start of the war. The McRae was originally intended to roam the seas as one of the first commerce raiders with a secret mission to travel to England and gather much-needed supplies for the new Confederacy. Instead, circumstances kept her on the Mississippi River, where she fought from the river's mouth to the banks of Kentucky. Most notably, the McRae participated in the defense of New Orleans in April of 1862. Fought Like Devils shows how the Confederacy worked to build a navy and defend the most important waterway in North America. Drawing on government records, newspapers, personal letters, diaries, and reminisces; Neil P. Chatelain tells the story of the CS McRae and its crew in their struggle to defend the Mississippi River for the Confederacy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49996967018769,"sku":"CIN1496915313G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51030434414865,"sku":"NIN9781496915313","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52675605561617,"sku":"NLS9781496915313","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1496915313.jpg?v=1751085584"},{"product_id":"defending-the-arteries-of-rebellion-book-neil-p-chatelain-9781611215106","title":"Defending the Arteries of Rebellion","description":"Most studies of the Mississippi River focus on Union campaigns to open and control it, while overlooking Southern attempts to stop them. Neil Chatelain's Defending the Arteries of Rebellion: Confederate Naval Operations in the Mississippi River Valley, 1861-1865 is the other side of the story - the first modern full-length treatment of inland naval operations from the Confederate perspective.   Confederate President Jefferson Davis realized the value of the Mississippi River and its entire valley, which he described as the “great artery of the Confederacy.” This was the key internal highway that controlled the fledgling nation’s transportation network. Davis and Stephen Mallory, his secretary of the navy, knew these vital logistical paths had to be held, and offered potential highways of invasion for Union warships and armies to stab their way deep into the heart of the Confederacy.   They planned to protect these arteries of rebellion by crafting a ring of powerful fortifications supported by naval forces. Different military branches, however, including the navy, marine corps, army, and revenue service, as well as civilian privateers and even state naval forces, competed for scarce resources to operate their own vessels. A lack of industrial capacity further complicated Confederate efforts and guaranteed the South’s grand vision of deploying dozens of river gunboats and powerful ironclads would never be fully realized.   Despite these limitations, the Southern war machine introduced numerous innovations and alternate defenses including the Confederacy’s first operational ironclad, the first successful use of underwater torpedoes, widespread use of army-navy joint operations, and the employment of extensive river obstructions. When the Mississippi River came under complete Union control in 1863, Confederate efforts shifted to the river’s many tributaries, where a bitter and deadly struggle ensued to control these internal lifelines. Despite a lack of ships, material, personnel, funding, and unified organization, the Confederacy fought desperately and scored many localized tactical victories—often won at great cost - but failed at the strategic level.   Chatelain, a former Navy Surface Warfare Officer, grounds his study in extensive archival and firsthand accounts, official records, and a keen understanding of terrain and geography. The result is a fast-paced, well-crafted, and endlessly fascinating account that is sure to please the most discriminating student of the Civil War.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52458552885521,"sku":"CIN1611215102G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52604754100497,"sku":"CIN1611215102VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781611215106.jpg?v=1759433200"},{"product_id":"treasure-and-empire-in-the-civil-war-book-neil-p-chatelain-9781476693811","title":"Treasure and Empire in the Civil War","description":"Across North America's periphery, unknown and overlooked Civil War campaigns were waged over whether the United States or Confederacy would dominate lands, mines, and seaborne transportation networks of North America's mineral wealth. The U.S. needed this wealth to stabilize their wartime economy while the Confederacy sought to expand their own treasury. Confederate armies advanced to seize the West and its gold and silver reserves, while warships steamed to intercept Panama route ships transporting bullion from California to Panama to New York. United States forces responded by expelling Confederate incursions and solidified territorial control by combating Indigenous populations and enacting laws encouraging frontier settlement. The U.S. Navy patrolled key ports, convoyed treasure ships, and integrated continent-wide intelligence networks in the ultimate game of cat and mouse.     This book examines the campaigns to control North America's mineral wealth, linking the Civil War's military, naval, political, diplomatic and economic elements. Included are the hemispheric land and sea adventures involving tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, admiral and explorer Charles Wilkes, renowned sea captain Raphael Semmes, General Henry Sibley, cowboy and mountain man Kit Carson, Indigenous leaders Mangas Coloradas and Geronimo, writer and miner Mark Twain, and Mormon leader Brigham Young.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52586301554961,"sku":"NLS9781476693811","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781476693811.jpg?v=1761054394"},{"product_id":"this-great-contest-afloat-book-neil-p-chatelain-9781611217773","title":"This Great Contest Afloat","description":"“History offers no example where so much was accomplished in so short a time, or where so many events were crowded into the space of four years, in which the Navy was employed subduing a coast over four thousand miles in length, and recapturing a river-coast of more than five thousand miles,” wrote Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter in his 1886 The Naval History of the Civil War.  Porter’s words demonstrate the true scale of the Civil War’s naval activity. Thousands of ships took part in the conflict, fighting battles alongside the great armies, and patrolling around the globe. The actions of more than 100,000 sailors on both sides impacted the war’s military, naval, economic, and diplomatic aspects, all while providing the tools to realize the Anaconda Plan of isolating and splitting the Confederacy.  Unlike the army dividing its efforts into the Eastern, Western, and Trans-Mississippi theaters, the Civil War’s naval forces fought in four distinct theaters of conflict. The offshore blockade was an economic and logistical campaign waged over whether Confederate armies would remain properly supplied. Sailors enacting that blockade simultaneously worked in tandem with armies to assault cities and coastal areas to deny the Confederacy its ports and coastal infrastructure, all while Confederate sailors fought to both break the blockade and keep control of its ports. Meanwhile, fleets on both sides battled for control over the Mississippi River valley, with a split Confederacy at stake. Finally, an economic and diplomatic war was waged across the oceans, where Confederate privateers and commerce raiders prowled for Federal merchants.  In This Great Contest Afloat: The Civil War on the Seas, Coastline, Rivers, and Oceans, award-winning historian and professor Neil P. Chatelain unpacks each of these naval theaters. Using prolific firsthand accounts merged with keen macro analysis, Chatelain takes readers to the decks of blockade-runners, beaches of coastal assaults, riverine ironclads, and targeted merchants, showing the extent and impact of Civil War naval activity.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53617353883921,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53617353949457,"sku":"NIN9781611217773","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781611217773.jpg?v=1780458423"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-neil-p-chatelain.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}