While more dramatic events took place elsewhere, the story of the war here on the Florida coast is one of frustrated efforts and potential never fully realized. The book is illustrated with photos, maps, and records from the Columbus Naval Museum facilities. No matter the variations of point of view and technique, historians must always allow for those constants. If the naval heroes of the Civil War are not the towering figures of Grant and Lee, Sherman and Johnston, or Jackson, Sheridan, and Stuart, the history of the navies is no less a part of that story. The story is epic in its importance to a nation and a people.
Rivers dominate the geography of the South.
For veterans of twentiety-century wars, these cities have been ports of call and ports of embarkation. Civil War history recalls, in turn, the economic significance of ports and shipping to the Old South. As the major agricultural area of the United States, the states that became the Confederacy were closely linked to the world market for raw materials and agricultural products. The rivers, which had been the pathways of settlers moving inland, became avenues of commercial and economic development long before the advent of railroads. The issue of the slave trade, of slavery in new states and territories, and of the place of slavery in the Southern economy further enflamed the North-South conflict to the point of secession and Civil War.