dhughes2017 – Dwight S. Hughes

Dwight S. Hughes

Civil War Naval History—Author & Speaker: "If history seems boring, you're doing it wrong"

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Witness to the Bloody Angle
December 17, 2024
While on a family visit to Philadelphia last month, I toured the nearby Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, PA, not expecting to encounter Civil War art. The museum featured a wonderful exhibit of early 20th Century illustrators including N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, and Norman Rockwell. Leisurely strolling along a wall lined with beautiful but […]
A Thousand Words a Battle: Hampton Roads
November 22, 2024
USS Monitor Versus the CSS Virginia, Hampton Roads, Virginia March 9, 1862 The dusk-dappled surface of Hampton Roads reflected Union blue sky, placidly intermingling with Rebel gray clouds even as a manmade storm was brewing on the waters. John Emmet O’Brien, 13 years old, was stationed at Fort Monroe with his older brother, Richard; both […]
Our Favorite Books: Dwight Hughes’ Top 5 Books
November 12, 2024
Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States (Baltimore, 1869) Raphael Semmes, captain of the infamous commerce raider CSS Alabama, composed his memoir not only as a preeminent naval warrior, but as an accomplished international lawyer, dedicated Southern patriot, and superb narrator. The first six chapters delineate the antebellum argument […]
Shenandoah: Loss and Gain 160 Years Ago
October 22, 2024
As autumn blazed the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia on October 19, 1864, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan routed Confederates under Lt. Gen. Jubal Early at the battle of Cedar Creek, a bloody ending to the Second Valley Campaign. This beautiful breadbasket of the South was securely in Union hands. General in Chief Ulysses S. Grant instructed […]
Can’t Dance, Don’t Ask Me: General Grant at the Ball
October 16, 2024
I recently posted a humorous anecdote involving Gen. Grant and a hissing torpedo. It was written by Eliot Callender, a Union sailor who professed to have witnessed the event aboard an ironclad on the western rivers in early 1862. Here is another Grant episode by the same author. After the war, Callender went on the […]
Who’s in Charge? Command and Control on the Rivers
August 28, 2024
Because we know what happened, it is easy to overlook the ad-hoc character of the Civil War, the degree to which our ancestors made it up as they went along. This is particularly true of the river war where the United States Ram Fleet provides an excellent illustration of enterprising innovation coupled with command confusion […]
That the Navy May Not Get Ahead
July 19, 2024
One of the joys of a historian is perusing obscure primary sources, finding wonderful first-person anecdotes that–like a strobe flash–illuminate people and conflicts of another era, and sharing them. St. Louis native Eliot Callender enlisted in the Union navy to serve on river gunboats. After the war, he became a noted historian and self-published a […]
The Battle of Plum Point Bend (Where?)
July 3, 2024
It wasn’t much of a battle in terms of forces engaged or casualties. If mentioned at all, it is passed over briefly in discussions of the more prominent First Battle of Memphis that quickly followed. Like many minor engagements, however, the affair at Plum Point Bend is an interesting microcosm—in this case of the naval […]
USS Monitor: The Half-Charge Myth
April 30, 2024
Many published descriptions of the battle of Hampton Roads (including my recent book[1]) explain that USS Monitor expended only “half charges” of powder in her 11-inch Dahlgren guns during that legendary fight with CSS Virginia on March 9, 1862. Hindsight then and since spawned several engaging “what ifs” (see previous post), one of which holds […]
Misgovernance or Treason? April 1861, Part 1
March 31, 2024
April Fool’s Day, 1861, about 6:00 p.m.: The portly figure of Navy Secretary Gideon Welles charged into the Executive Mansion and into the commander in chief’s office with a sheaf of papers. Abraham Lincoln looked up from his writing, noted the secretary’s countenance, and inquired, “What have I done wrong?” Welles had “received with surprise” […]