About the Author

Robert M. Browning Jr. retired in 2015 as Chief Historian of the United States Coast Guard. He is author or editor of six books, among them From Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War, U.S. Merchant Vessel War Casualties of World War II, and Lincoln’s Trident: The West Gulf Blockading Squadron during the Civil War. He is past editor of the International Journal of Naval History.

Reviews

“The Wells letters are a valuable addition to the naval history of the Civil War. In these letters written to his mother, sister, young brother Ben and a few others during the four years he served in the Union Navy, Wells describes his experience aboard six Union Navy vessels serving in the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron and West Gulf Blockading Squadron. Few published or manuscript collections of letters or journals of Union Navy officers or sailors offer readers, students, and historians descriptions of life aboard this many Union vessels over such an extended period of time.”— Barbara Brooks Tomblin, author of Bluejackets and Contrabands: African Americans and the Union Navy

"Though Henry Wells was never able to live the life he might have imagined for himself, his letters leave behind a richly informative legacy of Civil War naval service that historian Robert Browning has significantly rescued from obscurity. In terms of sheer numbers, the body of published Union naval correspondence remains disproportionately small in comparison to that of those who wrote about their army service, but the Wells letter collection at least qualitatively narrows that unfortunate gap. Worthy of the highest recommendation, I Am Fighting for the Union is a letter collection possessing value rarely equaled in the entire Civil War naval library."—Civil War Books and Authors