WITH SOME NOTES ON THE BLOCKADE

While the West in 1861–62 was alive with marching armies and the sound of strife, the East had been experiencing its share of activity by land and sea, and the navy must first engage us. The blockade became steadily more effective as new ships, purchased, chartered, or built for the purpose, gathered at the various rendezvous. Hatteras Inlet and Port Royal, seized in the fall of 1861,216 became bases for coast and inland expeditions which narrowed the Confederate hold on the shore of the Atlantic. In January, 1862, a fleet and army, braving the mid-winter storms which were more formidable than human opposition, entered by Hatteras Inlet, in order to dominate more completely the North Carolina sounds. The fortifications on Roanoke Island, lying between Albemarle and Pamlico sounds, were easily captured, February 8th. New-Berne and other towns were soon after occupied, and the inlets and river-mouths so occupied and threatened that the outlets to the sea became for the Confederates few and perilous. This successful course was interrupted during the Virginia campaign of the summer; the troops were to a large extent withdrawn to places where reinforcements were demanded. The Roanoke Island expedition is noteworthy, among other reasons, for bringing to the front Ambrose E. Burnside, its289 commander,217 a brave and well-intentioned patriot, quite inadequate, however, for large responsibilities, which later came upon him.

During these same weeks forces farther south were equally busy in expeditions from Port Royal. Fort Pulaski, the strong work which commanded the approaches to Savannah, a post environed by swamps and watercourses, and therefore difficult of access, succumbed rather to the engineering skill than to the bravery of its assailants, April 11, 1862; therefore, most of the littoral of Georgia, in addition to that of North and South Carolina, was in Federal hands.218 These conquests were presently supplemented by the occupation of the Atlantic ports of Florida. On the Gulf side, the retention of Fort Pickens by union forces from the beginning had put Pensacola Harbor under Federal control. The blockade, at first deemed impracticable, within a year of its establishment was throttling the foreign commerce which was vital to the Confederacy. On the Atlantic scarcely any important ports were left except Charleston and Wilmington; and before the thresholds of these places lay, night and day, the fierce and watchful war-dogs of the union.219 Nevertheless, up to April, 1862, the Gulf ports of Mobile, New Orleans, Galveston, and Matagorda still remained to the Confederacy. How long could these maintain themselves?

This swift and easy repossession of the southern coastline by the union, however important, lacked the wholesale excitement of great and bloody battles, and was a game little appreciated. But in the midst of it came an incident dramatic and startling in the highest degree, its hero being a naval officer, David Glasgow Farragut, son of a Spaniard from the island of Minorca, who had married a girl of Scotch strain and settled in the Tennessee290 mountains. After the birth of David the family removed to Louisiana, the father receiving a naval command. David as a boy of thirteen was on the Essex at Valparaiso, in 1814, in her famous fight against the Ph?be and Cherub. He had done good service on the seas and in port for almost fifty years, but his opportunity did not come until he was sixty years old.220
THE MISSISSIPPI BELOW NEW ORLEANS

The need of seizing New Orleans, if practicable, was obvious: the place commanded the lower Mississippi, and was the most populous and important city of the Confederacy.291 The government, therefore, early gave thought to its capture, assigning for that end a land force of eighteen thousand men, under General Benjamin F. Butler, and a powerful fleet. It was recognized that the navy must play the larger part in the operations: eighty-two ships, therefore, were assigned to the West Gulf Squadron, ranging from tugs, mortar-schooners, and chartered ferry-boats to the most powerful man-of-war which the nation owned.221 To command this great fleet was chosen Farragut, whose force and capacity had been recognized, especially by Welles, Secretary of the Navy.222 He hoisted his flag on the Hartford, a wooden ship of nineteen hundred tons and twenty-four guns, and February 2, 1862, sailed southward from Hampton Roads to Ship Island, midway between the mouth of the Mississippi and Mobile, the rendezvous for the army and squadron.

Farragut’s ships were all of wood; and, although steam in great part was the motive-power, sails were not superseded. Even as Farragut was concentrating in the Gulf, an event, to be described presently, took place in Hampton Roads which revolutionized naval warfare. But the enterprises in the Gulf were well started, and some triumphs still remained for the old-fashioned sailor and the old-fashioned ship.223 In March the fleet managed to cross the ba............