Dr. Robert M. Browning, the chief historian of the United States Coast Guard and one of the nations leading scholars on Civil War naval history, will present the 2005 Civil War Scholars Lecture Series program. The lecture, “The Blockade Will Be Broken: The Union Blockade of the East Coast During the Civil War,” is based on Browning’s two books on the coastal blockade.

The lecture will be presented on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 at the Cultural Center in Charleston, West Virginia, at 7:00 p.m. A reception and book signing will follow the program.

In his lecture, Browning will discuss the two major blockade-running ports on the east coast—Wilmington, North Carolina and Charleston, South Carolina. It will also cover the difficulties of maintaining the blockade, the views of the officers and men who served on the ships, the tactics used by the leaders to stop blockade running and how effective the blockade was.

“When the public thinks of the blockade, they think of Rhett Butler and envision sleek and fast vessels that dodged cumbersome blockading ships. This is a romanticized view of the blockade,” Browning said. “This type of action happened, but the South’s efforts to break the blockade and the Union’s to maintain it were immense. The blockade should be considered the longest and the most far-reaching battle of the Civil War.”

Browning decided to study the blockade after discovering that previous studies had focused on the blockade runners while ignoring it from the perspective of the Union Navy. “It led me in a direction in which I could seek answers to questions that had never been explored as well as to redefine the role of the US Navy during the Civil War,” Browning stated.

The result was his two books — From Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron During the Civil War and Success Was All That Was Expected: The South Atlantic Blockading Squadron During the Civil War. In his review of From Cape Charles to Cape Fear, noted historian Gary Gallagher wrote, "This study sets a standard that other historians of the navy’s part in the Civil War would do well to match."

Browning is the editor of the International Journal of Naval History and serves on the editorial board of Sea History. He is the author of several additional books on naval history and a biography of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. His awards include the Jefferson Davis Book Award and the John Lyman Book Award. He has been an historian with the Coast Guard since 1989, and chief historian since 1991.

The Civil War Scholars Lecture Series is a program of the Kanawha Valley Civil War Roundtable and is provided with financial assistance from the West Virginia Humanities Council, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is provided through sponsorship from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History.