The most famous warship of the American Civil War, the USS Monitor, was the front-line weapon in a grand strategic initiative established by the U.S. Government as a means of insuring the ultimate defeat of the Southern Confederacy through not only the blockade but isolation from possible foreign aid. Union ironclads were designed for the specific purpose, of deterring the great European powers-especially Great Britain.
As such, Fuller addresses many persistent misconceptions of what the monitors were for, and why they failed in other roles associated with naval operations of the Civil War. Monitors were ironclad, not fort, killers. Combining extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, this book offers an in-depth look at how the Union Navy achieved its greatest grand-strategic victory in the American Civil War, becoming a sobering challenge to British naval power.
About the Author
Howard Fuller is Senior Lecturer of War Studies in the Department of History at the University of Wolverhampton. He specialises in Anglo-American 19th century history, particularly the American Civil War and the British Empire. He lives in the U.K.
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