摘要：The Memphis Navy Yard remains an often overlooked part of antebellum U.S. naval history, yet for over a decade it played an important role in sectional politics.1It arose in the 1840s amidst regional political, economic, and security concerns and declined when those objectives changed. Though local and state politics certainly played a role in its development, this paper will focus on the influence of regional politics on national naval policy. Several factors made the establishment of a western naval facility politically desirable in the early 1840s. Southerners feared another Anglo–American war where British attacks would not be limited to the coasts, but might include raids up southern rivers to incite slave rebellions.2They called for better coastal fortifications, new armories, an increased naval presence, and a "western naval depot and dockyard." The west added demands of its own such as forcing the U.S. Navy to use American grown hemp for cordage and a program of internal improvements.3In 1841, Navy Secretary Abel Upshur set an ambitious agenda for naval reform, expansion, and modernization. Serving John Tyler, an unpopular president, he faced a Congress that viewed naval policy largely along sectional, rather than political lines, with most southerners and westerners seeing the navy as an extravagance that benefited a handful of eastern states.4Upshur tried to build a consensus for naval expansion, arguing that it benefited every part of the country, specifically the South and West. As Congress discussed the Gulf of Mexico's vulnerability, the Senate called upon Upshur's views on the "necessity and practicability" of establishing a navy base on the Gulf of Mexico, predicated on an ongoing naval survey.5The Navy had a yard at Pensacola, but after over a decade it lacked construction and repair facilities or even a wharf. Soon the Senate also inquired into "the expediency … [of] establishing a shipyard on the Ohio or Mississippi River."
