As it would in nearly every war in U.
S. history, the United States Coast Guard served an important role in the Civil War. During this conflict, the Coast Guard’s ancestor agency of the United States Revenue Cutter Service performed a variety of naval combat operations.
By 1860, the Revenue Cutter Service’s fleet was spread across the U.S., with cutters stationed in every major American seaport. After the presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, the nation began splitting apart. During these months, men in the service like their counterparts in the Navy and the Army had to choose between serving the federal government or the Confederacy, so the service lost most of its cutters in the South. For example, the captain of the Mobile-based revenue cutter Lewis Cass turned over his vessel to Alabama state authorities, forcing most of his officers and crew to travel overland through Secessionist territory to reach the North.
The commanding officer of the New Orleans-based cutter McClelland refused a direct order from Treasury Secretary John Dix to sail his vessel into Northern waters. Dix next ordered the executive officer to arrest the captain, assume command of the cutter and sail it north, ordering that the captain be deemed a mutineer if he interfered with the transfer of command. Dix ended his message by writing, “If anyone attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the sp
ot”--a quote that would become famous as a rallying message for Northerners. Unfortunately for Dix, the second-in-command of the McClelland was also a Southern sympathizer and the cutter was turned over to local authorities. The revenue cutters taken by Confederate forces were mainly used in local naval operations. In addition to five cutters turned over to Southern authorities, Union forces had to destroy a cutter at the Norfolk Navy Yard before Confederate forces captured the facility.
The Civil War required a major increase in the size of the cutter fleet not only to replace captured cutters, but also to support increased marine safety and law enforcement operations. Six cutters sailed from the Great Lakes for East Coast bases and nine
former cutters in the U.S. Coast Survey were transferred back to the Revenue Cutter Service for wartime duty. The service also purchased the steamers Cuyahoga, Miami, Reliance, Northerner and William Seward and built six more steam cutters, which joined the fleet by 1864. These new cutte
rs interdicted rampant smuggling brought on by the war, served as guardships in Northern ports, and helped enforce the wartime blockade of the South.
Union revenue cutters served in a variety of combat missions. For example, the Harriett Lane, considered the most advanced revenue cutter at the start of the war, fired the Civil War’s first naval shot in April 1861 while attempting to relieve Federal forces at Fort Sumter. During the ensuing months, Harriett Lane received orders for escort duty, blockade operations and shore bombardment
. In August 1861, the cutter served a central role in the capture of forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, and was later transferred to the Navy to serve as a command ship for Admiral David Dixon Porter in the Union naval campaign against New Orleans.
The cutter Miami also served as a kind of presidential command ship during th
e war. In late April 1862, President Abraham Lincoln, War Secretary Edwin Stanton and Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase cruised from Washington, D.C., to Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Soon after, Lincoln ordered the bombardment of Sewell’s Point, near Norfolk, in preparation for an assault on that city. On May 9th, Lincoln ordered a reconnaissance party from the cutter to examine the shore near Norfolk in preparation for la
nding troops. The next day, Miami covered the landing of six Union regiments, which quickly captured Norfolk after Confederate forces evacuated the city and the Norfolk Navy Yard.
The gunboat Naugatuck proved a unique cutter in the service’s history. Given to the Revenue Cutter Service by New Jersey inventor Edwin Stevens, the gunboat served with the James River Flotilla. In May 1861, Naugatuck assisted in an effort to draw the infamous Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia into a battle in the open waters of Hampton Roads. After the
capture of its homeport of Norfolk, Virginia’s crew destroyed their trapped ironclad. Meanwhile, Naugatuck steamed up the James River with the USS Monitor and other shallow draft Union warships to threaten Richmond. Naugatuck’s main armament, a 100-pound Parrott gun, burst during the subsequent attack on the earthen fort at Drewry’s Bluff and the cutter withdrew to Hampton Roads with the rest of the Union 
warships. The gunboat served the remainder of the war as a guardship in New York Harbor.
As with all wars, the Civil War had a transformative effect on the military services. The conflict transformed the pre-war Revenue Cutter Service fleet from a collection of obsolete sailing vessels to a primarily steam-driven fleet of cutters. The vital operations supported by cutters also cemented the role of the service in such missions as convoy duty, blockade operations, port security, coastal patrol, and brown-water combat operations. These missions have remained core competencies of the Coast Guard over the past 160 years. a status made official by establishment of the modern Coast Guard in 1915.