Why was the Chesapeake Bay so important?

Both the Confederacy and Union led raids on roads and railways throughout the region, which from war's outset left the Bay as the primary "highway" for the Union and the Confederacy to get supplies and troops to key cities such as Baltimore, Washington, Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Norfolk.

In 1862 the Bay was a strategically critical component for the North in its Peninsula Campaign - and became the route for what was then the largest army ever assembled under one man (Major General George B. McClellan) in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

The many rivers and creeks throughout the Chesapeake region afforded both the Union and the Confederacy with a unique means of transporting supplies and men.

What did the Union do to try to control the Bay?

Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation on April 27, 1861, declaring that… "an efficient blockade of the ports of those states (Virginia and North Carolina) will therefore be established…"

Commander J. H. Ward, U.S.N., proposed the formation of a "flying flotilla" to patrol the Bay, to protect Union supply ships, and to block Confederate attempts to get supplies or to pose a naval threat to Washington. Ward's proposal was put into action and the Potomac Flotilla was born.
Pictured on the left is The Commodore Reed - A part of the Potomac Flotilla (Photograph courtesy of the Naval Historical Society)

What did the Confederacy do to try to control the Bay?

The South, meanwhile, was not idle in its efforts to assert its will in the Bay country as well. The Advisory Council of the State of Virginia urged that "prompt steps be taken to encourage the formation of home guards in all the counties bordering on the Chesapeake Bay and its navigable tributaries…." The Richmond Dispatch urged citizens of the Bay counties to form guerrilla bands, "and if the enemy approaches their section of the country, hang upon his outskirts, fill the hollows, hide behind trees, in ditches, anywhere that they can best protect themselves and cut down the enemy … and every man they drop will be furnishing Virginia with at least another weapon.

"In order to break the Union's blockade efforts the Confederacy countered with attacks on the Potomac Flotilla from both land and water with shore batteries and bands of raiders. The Confederates also formed a widespread smuggling network that used the many creeks and rivers throughout the Bay to smuggle supplies to both the army and the civilian population.

Pictured on the left is a Confederate Battery over looking the James River (Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress)