American Historical Ephemera & Photography

FITCH, LeRoy (1835-1875). Letter signed ("LeRoy Fitch") as Lt. Commander, Commanding 10th District Mississippi Squadron, from aboard the USS Moose below Nashville, addressed to Edmund Morgan, Commanding USS Springfield, Nashville, 11 December 1864. 1 1/3 pp, 4to (dampstains, creasing at the folds, both pages reattached at the two folds by archival tape).  Fitch wants Morgan to bring below “some barges and steamers . . . about the mouth of the Stone River” in anticipation of rebel efforts to install a battery at or near that point. “I would send the Neosho but at the present stage of water and severity of weather it is almost impossible to do anything with her.” Fitch describes this as a delicate operation requiring finesse to avoid enemy fire. 

FITCH, LeRoy. Letter signed ("LeRoy Fitch") as Lt. Commander, Commanding 10th District Mississippi Squadron, from aboard the USS Moose off Louisville, addressed to Acting Master Edmund Morgan aboard USS Moose off Louisville, 31 May 1864. 1 ½ pp., 4to (dampstains, creasing at folds, adhesive tape, and loss at top of second page). Orders to accompany and deliver “Ordnance and Ordnance stores” to Bridgeport, Alabama, and then proceed to Smithfield, KY to “relieve Acting Master Watson of the command of the U. S. Steamer Springfield.  He is to notify Fitch by telegraph when the guns arrive at Nashville and at Bridgeport.  He is to report to Col. Donaldson at Nashville to hurry the shipment on its way. 

Lt.Cmdr. Fitch was a veteran of the Mexican-American War who graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1856. He gained a reputation as an innovator of protective measures for his "convoy arrangements" which were utilized by steamboats supplying the Union armies. He is considered an early expert on counter-insurgency tactics, and certain of his convoy techniques were later employed in the Atlantic during WW I and WWII. Fitch also was Commanding Moose in the Mississippi Squadron when in pursuit of famed Confederate raider General John H. Morgan for 500 miles up the Ohio River. An interesting pair of letters from a significant but lesser-known naval officer.