Moreover a close blockade was simply impossible. Not one ship in a dozen that attempted to pass out or in, was in actual fact captured or driven ashore. The number of ships engaged in blockade running was steadily reduced by the increasing dangers encountered, but the traffic continued, with no effective interruption, until near the end of the war, the chief effect of the blockade being to increase the profits of the English shipowners and shipmasters who engaged in the perilous commerce and enormously to enhance the market value of goods of every kind at the South.
An ounce of quinine that cost $2.80 in Nassau was worth $1,100 or $1,200 in Charleston, while the Confederate money received for the quinine would buy cotton at ten cents a pound which had a value at the very least of half a dollar a pound in gold at Nassau. On such terms the human instinct of gain made it certain that the blockade, however legally effective it might be made, would be broken through by daring shipmasters so long as the war should last and precisely that is what in fact happened.
But in aid of the blockade, and in aid of the general policy of shutting the South in and compelling it to rely exclusively upon its own inadequate resources, the Federal Government promptly dispatched forces to the South, to capture the seacoast fortifications there and to make of the coast a Federal instead of a Confederate possession and stronghold. On the twenty-ninth of August, 1861, an expedition under command of General B. F. Butler, captured the forts at Cape Hatteras. On the seventh and eighth of November another expedition reduced the works at Port Royal and Hilton Head in South Carolina, thus making of the coast strongholds important strategic positions for the Northern arms. Later the whole coast, except the great harbor, was conquered.
It must always be a matter of astonishment to the historian that greater use was not made of the advantages thus gained at the beginning of the war. It is true that the geography of the Carolinian coast country specially lent itself to the defense of that region by small forces arrayed against greatly superior numbers. It is true, for example, that at Pocotatigo, on the twenty-second of October, 1862, two batteries of artillery and a company or two of dismounted cavalry numbering in all only 350 men, being reinforced late in the day by about four hundred more, succeeded in repelling the all-day assault of not less than three thousand and ended by driving the Federal force back to its ships. This was due in part to the peculiarly defensive nature of the ground and in part to the certainty that the Federal forces could not remain over night at Pocotatigo without finding nearly every man among them stricken with that dire disease, "country fever," before morning.
But all day long at Pocotatigo the Federals had the Charleston and Savannah railroad on their left less than a mile away and with absolutely no obstacle whatsoever between them and its possession. Beyond the railroad line lay the high, healthful pine lands. In brief there was no reason whatever, aside from mere blundering, why they should not then and there have seized upon the Charleston and Savannah railroad, made themselves masters of the entire coast, and proceeded to the easy conquest or isolation of Charleston on the one hand and Savannah on the other.
This particular matter is here mentioned only because it serves to illustrate a larger truth. From the time when the Port Royal and the Hilton Head forts were captured there was never an hour when a capable and resolute general in command of 5,000 men—and 50,000 might easily have been sent to him—could not have made himself master of the main line of Southern communication, master of Charleston, master of Savannah and practically master of South Carolina and its neighboring states. An enterprising officer engaged in accomplishing this would, of course, have been reinforced to any desirable extent, and a campaign inland at that point and at that time would have promised results of the utmost consequence.
Here was another of the errors that served to prolong through four years a war that ought to have been brought to an end during its first campaign, and the needless and senseless prolongation of which inflicted almost incredible loss and suffering upon the South and subjected the North to financial burdens and human sacrifices of the most stupendous character.
The blockade was early made "effective" in that degree which international law requires—so effective that shipmasters trying to pass through it had no conceivable right of redress if their ships were captured, or blown to pieces, or run ashore by the blockading squadron. It was never, even unto the end, made so effective as to prevent British merchantmen from trafficking at uncertain intervals between Nassau and the Southern ports. It did not and could not put an end to the importation of the necessaries of war into Southern ports; but it made such importation so enormously expensive, even if measured by the cotton exports on which the trade was based, as greatly to cripple the Confederacy in its finances. The price of goods imported at such hazard and with such difficulty was made great enough to cover the easy contingency of capture upon the outward as well as upon the inward voyage.
He who would understand the events of that period must constantly bear in mind that during the first year or nearly that, of its duration this war of ours was conducted mainly by incapacity on both sides, by martinet captains and incapables in civil office who had been suddenly thrust into positions vastly too great for their abilities.