He continued: “To enforce the revenue laws in this district, and to cut up and prevent smuggling, which has been and is now carried on to a great extent, it seems to be necessary that an additional cutter should be sent out or that the Ewing, now in this port, should be assigned to that duty.”
In a later letter to the Secretary, Collier wrote: “... San Francisco ... must become to the nation what New York is to the Atlantic.... It is impossible to estimate the extent to which her commerce may reach. It is now large and it will be constantly on the increase. These facts are stated for the double purpose of putting you in position of what may be anticipated from duties, and of impressing upon Congress the necessity of doing something—doing much for California, and that without delay. The responsibilities that rest upon the Collector, in the absence of any legal tribunal, any legal adviser, to which he might resort for redress or advice weigh heavily upon me.”
The troubles experienced by Collier and other early-day collectors along the borders of the growing nation were soon to be submerged in the conflict between the states. At the outbreak of the Civil War most Southern Customs officers simply resigned and accepted appointments to similar posts in the Confederate government.
President Lincoln ordered a blockade of the South on April 19, 1861. At that time the United States naval fleet consisted of only 42 ships carrying some 555 guns. Of this total many were tenders and store ships and among them were old fashioned sailing ships and frigates. For a time, business went on as usual in the Southern ports.
Many in the South laughed at the idea of a blockade. One Southerner in a letter from Charleston, South Carolina, printed in the New York Illustrated News on June 15, 1861, said:
We are now in the enjoyment of a very pleasant spring, and are now as quiet as a brood of chicks under the parent’s wing. For all that, however, our head men are not asleep. Everything is going nicely. You have heard, no doubt, old Abe has blockaded our port.
A nice blockade indeed. On the second day a British ship, the A & A ran the gauntlet and got in safe. She leaves in a few days with a snug freight of $30,000. Today two vessels passed safely in, both British, I understand. A captain told me that one of them can carry more cotton than the A & A and that she is engaged at 5¢ a pound, which will give a freight of $35,000 to $40,000....
Under the guns of Admiral Farragut and the troops of General Butler, New Orleans remained securely in the hands of the Northern forces, shutting off this port to the Southern cause. After a short while Galveston fell to the Union and the flow of cotton and smuggled goods from this area was sharply reduced.
In England, the Liverpool firm represented by Thomas E. Taylor owned some fifteen ships which were engaged in blockade running. Among Taylor’s swiftest and most elusive runners was a steel vessel called the Banshee, one of the first—if not the first—ship built for the express purpose of evading the Union blockade for the Southern ports. Nassau, in the Bahamas, was the primary staging point where the blockade runners fueled and stocked for the run to the American coast.
The blockade had been underway for two years when Taylor brought the Banshee into Nassau. Workers removed everything aloft except the two lower masts, and the ship was painted an off shade of white which the blockade runners had found made their ships almost invisible at night, even from a distance of only a few yards.