Gustavus Vasa Fox of the Union Navy: A Biography

Ari Hoogenboom

Nov 2008 · Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM

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This “fine, perhaps definitive, biography” of the man who guided the U.S. Navy’s stellar Civil War campaigns “should be on every naval bookshelf” (Washington Times).

Gustavus Vasa Fox began his naval service in 1838, when he went to sea as a midshipman. He sailed in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Africa, in the Gulf of Mexico, and with the East India Squadron in the Pacific. His experiences working on the Coast Survey, navigating the lower Mississippi River, and captaining a steamer that ran from New York to Havana to New Orleans and back, would all prove invaluable in the Civil War.

During the war, Fox was instrumental in mounting the blockade of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay to the Rio Grande. In planning and coordinating expeditions, Fox deserves much of the credit for the navy’s successes at Hatteras, Port Royal, New Orleans, Mobile Bay, and Fort Fisher.

Passionately committed to preserving the Union, Fox also became an advocate of freedom and voting rights for African Americans. He was a skilled administrator who understood politics and developed a close working relationship with Abraham Lincoln. Along with officers like Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs and coordinator of military railroads Herman Haupt, Fox played a critical but overlooked role in the Union victory.

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Ari Hoogenboom is professor of history emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He is author of several books on the military career and presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes and is editor of Encyclopedia of American History: The Development of the Industrial United States, 1870–1899.