On February 16, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant paused in Nashville to answer a letter from an old friend. The two had grown up together in Ohio, and a childhood story claimed Daniel Ammen had once saved Grant from drowning after he fell into White Oak Creek near Georgetown. That old tale now carried a fitting irony, because Ammen had gone to sea and risen to become a respected senior naval officer, while Grant had kept to solid ground, leaving for West Point and the army.

The letter was informal, the kind two men write when they can skip formality. Grant thanked Ammen for advice on avoiding political entanglements, advice that arrived at a timely moment. Word had reached him that the House of Representatives had revived the rank of lieutenant general, and there was little doubt who would receive it. Grant soon added his thoughts on naval affairs, paying respect to the branch his friend served and praising the brave captains of the gunboats who had supported him along the western rivers and played decisive roles at Belmont, Forts Henry and Donelson, Vicksburg, and other points on the Mississippi, Tennessee, Cumberland, and their tributaries.

He wrote that Porter, Phelps, and some of the younger officers were among the smartest men he had ever met. He could not complain about them, for every request he had made they had carried out, whatever the danger. The two naval officers Grant named deserve closer attention. One is well known to students of the Civil War, the other is largely forgotten.

David Dixon Porter, born in 1813 and died in 1891, was a professional navy officer from a distinguished military family that included his adoptive brother, David G. Farragut. His wartime service stretched across the conflict: the relief of Fort Pickens at Pensacola in 1861, the mortar flotilla at New Orleans in 1862, and command of the fleet during the Vicksburg campaign in 1863 as an acting rear admiral. He moved on to the Red River campaign in Louisiana in 1864 and the capture of Fort Fisher in January 1865.

He served everywhere during the war, and he and Grant worked together extremely well. The other officer is the one history has largely passed over: Seth Ledyard Phelps, twelve years younger than Porter, whose military roots ran back to his grandfather of the same name, who served in Washington’s army during the Revolution and endured the hardships of Valley Forge. Phelps’s father had fought in the War of 1812. Drawn to warships, Phelps began his career in 1842 as a midshipman aboard the Independence, the first ship of the line commissioned by the United States Navy.

Over the next two decades, he served around the world: off West Africa working to suppress the illegal slave trade, in the Mediterranean, and in the Mexican War, where he served on gunboats supporting General Zachary Taylor’s army. During the Civil War, Phelps helped build the brown-water navy and played major roles in battles along the Mississippi, Tennessee, Cumberland, and other rivers. He began as a lieutenant assigned to help convert civilian riverboats into fighting ships. He commanded the wooden gunboats Conestoga, Tyler, and Lexington, and became intimately familiar with the Ohio, Tennessee, and Cumberland rivers, knowledge that made him invaluable as Union forces pushed deeper into Confederate territory.

He took his ships into enemy country on reconnaissance missions, studying Confederate defenses at Fort Henry and discovering the fortifications being built at Fort Donelson. When Union forces attacked Fort Henry in February 1862, Phelps and his wooden gunboats supported the ironclads under Andrew Hull Foote. After the fort surrendered, Phelps advanced further up the Tennessee River, cutting communications, destroying railroad track, seizing supplies, and chasing Confederate steamers. Days later, he returned to the Cumberland for the assault on Fort Donelson.

There Confederate batteries hammered Foote’s ironclads and wounded Foote himself. Phelps, serving as acting fleet commander, helped refit the damaged fleet to resume fighting before the Confederate garrison surrendered. The mission then took Phelps south down the Mississippi. At Fort Pillow in 1863, north of Memphis, he commanded the ironclad Benton when Confederate rams launched a sudden attack on the Union fleet.

Two federal gunboats were rammed and sunk in the confused engagement. Phelps responded by reinforcing the Union ships with railroad iron, logs, and added protection for their vulnerable rudders. His river war ultimately led him to Vicksburg. In August 1862, he led a raid downriver from Memphis that captured the Confederate transport Fairplay near Milliken’s Bend.

Her cargo held twelve hundred Enfield rifles, four thousand infantry muskets, ammunition, and military supplies desperately needed by Confederate forces. From Fort Henry to Vicksburg, Phelps helped prove that Union gunboats could scout ahead of armies, fight Confederate troops and ships, disrupt supply lines, and steadily open the western rivers to federal control. A surviving photograph shows him in uniform with nonstandard rank insignia at the peak of his career. The wide stripes on his sleeves date from 1862 and 1863, and the star also appears on the sleeves, but not alongside the wide stripes.

The official star was five-pointed, not the six-pointed one he wears. His shoulder straps carry the correct twisted anchor but lack the oak leaf at each end. The long gloves and high boots rarely appear in photographs of naval officers. After the war, in 1875, President Grant nominated Phelps to serve on the temporary board of commissioners in Washington, D.

C. Phelps took the chairmanship of the permanent board three years later. In 1883, President Chester A. Arthur appointed Phelps as his minister to Peru.

That appointment proved to be his last. Two years later, he died of a fever contracted during a hunting trip in the Andes. He was sixty-one years old. His remains were brought home and buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.

C. Among the builders of the brown-water navy, Seth Ledyard Phelps remains the one history has most neglected. Grant, who worked beside him through the campaigns that split the Confederacy in two, placed him alongside David Dixon Porter as among the smartest men he had ever met.