Gustavus Vasa Fox of the Union Navy: A Biography
by Ari Hoogenboom, Johns Hopkins University Press
Although he was only a secondary official in a service that tends to get secondary treatment in Civil War histories, Gustavus Vasa Fox played a crucial role in restoring the U.S. Navy to prominence and contributing to the Union’s ultimate victory. Ari Hoo gen boom’s new biography gives well-deserved praise to Fox’s lengthy list of accomplishments.
A friend of Abraham Lincoln’s, Fox was only a captain when he became chief clerk of the Navy Department on May 8, 1861, and eventually advanced to assistant secretary of the Navy Department. Perhaps Fox’s greatest accomplishment in that role was the promotion and production of revolutionary ironclad vessels for the Union fleet. He met with stubborn resistance in that aim even from the Navy; many officers dismissed them as “rickety and stupid.”
To secure the Mississippi and other Western riverine trade routes, the War Department turned to a set of ironclads to be known as the Cairo-class. Fox also authorized an ironclad that held its armament in a rotating turret. He was at Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862, to see USS Monitor duel CSS Virginia in a battle that “changed the history of naval warfare.”
Fox, who feared Great Britain as a rival, worked to counter its power by fostering good relations with Russia during his tenure. Hoo gen boom’s book makes a valid case that Gustavus Fox was the real force behind the U.S. Navy’s becoming the world’s most powerful fleet by 1865.
Originally published in the February 2010 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
