From the outset of the Civil War, the Chesapeake Bay was recognized as one of the most important pieces of real estate in America. The Capitals of both warring entities lay astride her tributaries - Washington, D.C. on the Potomac River and Richmond beside the James River. The short distance between these centers of power - 60 miles over land and 250 via water - kept huge armies prowling around Northern Virginia and Maryland for the length of the War. Access to the Bay meant the ability to quickly transport troops from one point to another, to receive shipped goods, and to threaten the enemy with strikes deep into their territory. Whoever could control access to the Bay would have a powerful advantage.
The Potomac Flotilla
Early in the conflict, the federal government created the Potomac Flotilla, a small fleet designed to patrol the Potomac River and the waters of the upper-Bay. They would have their hands full trying to curtail the legions. Even before Congress had officially declared war on the Confederate States, the Chesapeake Bay was a hotly contested waterway. When Virginia seceded in May of 1861, the Bay came alive with of smugglers, raiders and rebels that sought to disrupt federal control of the Bay. It was a perilous time, and something needed to done.
In May of 1861, federal authorities approved the creation of “a flying flotilla” to pacify and patrol the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Dubbed the Potomac Flotilla, the fleet would be directly responsible for the safety of travel and supplies to and from Washington and the upper-Bay. The fleet was initially made up of a handful of reconditioned steamers, barges and side-wheeled ships outfitted with cannon. The Flotilla included just six ships during its first months of service, but afterwards the Flotilla grew to become one of the most important naval arms in federal service. Oftentimes the best chance the Flotilla had for intercepting these runs was to catch them before they started. Local slaves and Northern sympathizers became invaluable resources in discovering smuggling plots before they were put into action.
As the war progressed and technology advanced, the Potomac Flotilla adapted. While Grant advanced through Virginia during his Overland Campaign of 1864, the Flotilla provided him with assistance by removing confederate mines from the Rappahannock River in northern Virginia. This allowed the Union army to use Fredericksburg as a secure base of supply, and earned Grant’s thanks. The Flotilla began disarming mines with such frequency that a station was set up outside of Fredericksburg to extract the gunpowder for use by Union armies in the field.
Ironclads
The Civil War saw the advent of many forms of warfare that had never been seen before - hot air balloons, grenades, torpedoes, repeating rifles, the Gatling gun and railroads were all used for the first time to wage war. But none of these inventions irrevocably changed the landscape of modern war as much as the introduction of ironclad ships, which first saw action in the Chesapeake Bay.
On the afternoon of March 8th, 1862, CSS Virginia became the first ironclad ship in the history of war to see action when she attacked the federal frigates Cumberland and Congress near the mouth of the Bay. Virginia began life as the USS Merrimack, a steam ship that was scuttled during the federal evacuation of Norfolk in 1861. Confederates subsequently raised the gigantic ship, fitted her with iron plating four inches thick and ten menacing cannons. Captain Franklin Buchanan commanded her on her voyage. As she steamed out of Norfolk toward the unaware federal ships lying at anchor near Newport News, she represented the Confederacy’s best hope for breaking the Union blockade strangling their port cities.
USS Virginia despite a bombardment from the federal ships and from the coastal batteries, sliced through the water and fatally rammed Cumberland below the water line, and the great 30-gun frigate went down, Virginia turned to Congress, who had run trying to escape. After a short but fierce exchange of fire, Congress surrendered and Buchanan ordered her to be burned. After that, remaining Union ships run their way to open sea.
But hope for the Union Navy arrived with their own ironclad, USS Monitor, steamed into Hampton Roads after a perilous three-day journey from New York City. The brainchild of Swedish engineer John Ericsson, Monitor was a low-slung and peculiar looking ship, with a single rotating turret housing two 11-inch cannons. Eight inches of iron plating was two-times more than Virginia’s. USS. Monitor was commanded by Lieutenant John Worden, who was still ill from time served in a Confederate prison camp early in the war.
As Virginia steamed into Hampton Roads through the morning fog of March 9th, there was for the first time in the history an ironclad battle. Monitor used its greater maneuverability and swiveling turret to keep a murderous fire on the slower Virginia, which managed to land several well-placed shots on the smaller ship. Neither craft could do much damage to the other, but Virginia survived more than 50 direct cannonball hits in the encounter. After four hours of fighting, Virginia landed a direct hit on Monitor’s pilothouse, blinding Worden for life and causing the smaller ship to momentarily break off the duel. Fearing the oncoming ebb tide, and operating roughly with both smokestacks blown off, Virginia took Monitor’s withdrawal as her cue to head for port.
Though the battle ended in a draw, Monitor had prevented Virginia from lying waste to rest of the fleet stationed at Hampton Roads, and had won a moral victory. The squat, iron-encased ships, impervious to almost all attacks, had ushered in a new era in naval engineering. Winston Churchill wrote in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples “The combat of the Merrimac [Virginia] and Monitor made the greatest change in sea-fighting since cannon fired by gunpowder had been mounted on ships.”
Point Lookout
Point Lookout Prison Camp, built on the shores of the Bay in southern Maryland, is one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Chesapeake Bay. Before the war, the sandy spit of land at the junction of the Potomac River and the Bay had been a popular resort for the society elite. In 1862, with the construction of a few additional buildings, the area was converted into a hospital for Union soldiers and a makeshift prison for Maryland southern sympathizers. In July of 1863, in the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, the federal government tabbed Camp Hammond, as Point Lookout was officially known, to house many of the thousands of rebel prisoners captured in that great battle.
The population of Point Lookout ballooned from 9,153 prisoners in December of 1863 to almost 15,000 by July of 1864, to an astronomical 20,000 men by June of 1865 – more than double what the camp had been designed to accommodate. The suffering and overcrowding of the rebel prisoners was made even worse when U.S. Secretary of State Edwin Stanton, reacting to what he considered the deliberate mistreatment and starvation of Union prisoners in Southern camps, demanded that rations for rebel prisoners be cut 20 percent.
A reliable count of the number of men who died while held at Point Lookout is difficult to ascertain. There are almost 4,000 men buried in the camp cemetery – roughly 8% of the 50,000 men who passed through. But the practice of burying many of the dead in mass has lead some to claim that this figure is grossly deflated.
Slavery Issue
The Chesapeake Bay region, like much of the country, was increasingly divided over the issue of slavery. Pennsylvania, as a free state, was loyal to the Union. The border states of Maryland and Delaware, although pro-slavery, remained loyal to the Union. Virginia seceded from the Union April 17,1861 and joined the Confederacy.
In Newport News, Virginia, Union Major General Benjamin F. Butler invoked property law to protect escaped slaves that had fled to his camp. He reasoned that if the Confederacy was going to refer to slaves as property he could seize them as property contraband of war. It meant that when runaway slaves flooded into Union camps, they were put to work. Although not fighting on the front lines, these individuals were instrumental in wartime operations including building fortifications, maintaining railroads and mining coal.
As time passed and Union casualties grew, blacks were granted the right to serve in the Union Army. In Maryland, six black regiments were formed, amassing more than 8,700 men. These regiments played major roles in the Union's battle plans – including the 36th U.S. Colored Infantry's guarding of the Confederate Prison at Point Lookout, MD and, later in the war, it's disabling of Confederate torpedoes in the lower Chesapeake. More than 180,000 black men served in the Union army 18,000 in the Union Navy. Altogether, 21 were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military honor in the United States.