The Gulf and Inland Waters; The Navy in the Civil War--III

Harrisburg, PA: The Archive Society, 1992. Facsimile Reprint Edition. Hardcover. Very good. viii, [2], 267, [3] pages. Maps. Decorative endpapers. Gilt-edged. Occasional footnotes. Appendix. Index. Alfred Thayer Mahan (September 27, 1840 - December 1, 1914) was a United States naval officer and historian. His book the The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 (1890) won immediate recognition, and with its successor, The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812 (1892), made him world famous and perhaps the most influential American author of the nineteenth century. Commissioned as a lieutenant in 1861, Mahan served the Union in the American Civil War as an officer on USS Worcester, Congress, Pocahontas, and James Adger, and as an instructor at the Naval Academy. In 1865, he was promoted to lieutenant commander, and then to commander (1872), and captain (1885). As commander of the USS Wachusett he was stationed at Callao, Peru, protecting US interests during the final stages of the War of the Pacific. In 1902 Mahan was elected president of the American Historical Association, and his address, "Subordination in Historical Treatment," is his most explicit explanation of his philosophy of history. In 1906, Mahan became rear admiral by an act of Congress that promoted all retired captains who had served in the American Civil War. Mahan wrote of this work: "The narrative in these pages follows chiefly the official reports, and it is believed will not be found to conflict seriously with them. Official reports, however, are liable to errors of statement and especially to the omission of facts, well known to the writer but not always to the reader, the want of which is seriously felt when the attempt is made not only to tell the gross results but to detail the steps that led to them. Such omissions, which are specially frequent in the earlier reports of the Civil War, the author has tried to supply by questions put, principally by letter, to surviving witnesses. A few have neglected to answer, and on those points he has been obliged, with some embarrassment, to depend on his own judgment upon the circumstances of the case; but by far the greater part of the officers addressed, both Union and Confederate, have replied very freely. The number of his correspondents has been too numerous to admit of his thanking them by name, but he begs here to renew to them all the acknowledgments which have already been made to each in person."