“I hasten, however, to express the dissent of this Government from the position which seems to be assumed by your note, that that temporary absence impairs the blockade and renders necessary a new notice of its existence. This Government holds that the blockade took effect at Charleston on the 11th day of this month, and that it will continually be in effect until notice of its relinquishment shall be given by Proclamation of the President of the United States.”
On May 13th the British ship Perthshire appeared off Pensacola, having heard nothing of the blockade there, but she was told that Mobile was open. So she went to Mobile, loaded cotton, and sailed on the 30th, although the port was closed on the 26th by the Powhatan. She was captured at sea on June 9th, by the Massachusetts, but released by the flagship Niagara, whose captain “considered the capture illegal, as, by order of the Department, no neutral vessel not having on board contraband of war was to be detained or captured unless attempting to leave or enter a blockaded port after the notification of blockade had been indorsed on her register,” The owner made a claim for £200 compensation on account of the detention of his ship, which had lost twelve days of her voyage; and the claim was allowed and paid by the government of the United States.
The United States had now to abide by the law that its navy had in 1812 established. The ship of a neutral had a right to enter any port left open by the government ships, and for several months after the President’s proclamation nine-tenths of the 185 Southern harbors remained open.
This matter is of importance because of the right of neutrals in case the blockade of a port was actually abandoned or raised even for an hour. The opening of the port made it legally necessary for the blockaders to begin over again as if no blockade had existed. The neutral entering an opened port had a right to remain fifteen days, as the law was applied, after she was officially notified of the blockade, while neutrals approaching a re-blockaded port had the right to go away unmolested if they had not been notified, actually or constructively, that the new blockade existed.
New Orleans was blockaded on May 26, 1861, by the Brooklyn, and Galveston on June 2d by the South Carolina. For celerity of movement in carrying out orders to blockade the different ports no man exceeded Lieutenant Woodhull, for within forty-eight hours after receiving orders to charter a steamer he had left Washington, obtained the Keystone State in the Delaware, carried her to Hampton Roads, and reported ready for duty.
On the whole, it may be said that on July 1, 1861, the magnitude of the work of blockading 185 ports and inlets began to be appreciated by the Navy Department. Moreover, the hesitation and vacillation that had characterized the early movements of the government were becoming submerged. The determination of the people of the North to preserve the American nation intact was growing, under the shame of early reverses ashore, into a mighty tide that was to be irresistible at the last. A blockade was established within the time mentioned, in which even the critical eye of British men-o’-warsmen, sent especially to examine it in the interests of British commerce, could find no flaw. When, on the 13th of July, Commodore Pendergrast issued another proclamation saying Virginia and North Carolina were legally closed, he stated the fact, and from that time on the whole coast was, at worst, under guard, if not impassable. It was a blockade that was to starve the hosts fighting against the flag into abandoning their arms and returning once more to the ballot-box for a redress of grievances.
This is by no means to say that the blockade was absolutely effectual. Tales of the blockade-runners are to be told further on, but some of the difficulties in the way of effecting a blockade, even when ships a-plenty were on the coast, must be considered here. Mention has already been made of the physical aspects of the coast. No more difficult coast for a blockade can be found in the world. With this in mind, let the reader recall the fact that the South in those days was about the only producer of cotton in the world, and that the sap of the long-leaved pine was converted into tar and turpentine, which were produced there in very great quantities. On the other hand, consider that the South had scarcely anything in the way of factories. The people there were dependent on commerce for their supplies of even the most common necessities of life—for household goods, for clothing, and even for some kinds of food. And as for the arms and supplies needed for a war, there was one small powder mill, but nothing more in all the South, unless, indeed, the existence of the Tredegar iron mills at Richmond might be called a gun and engine factory.
Here, then, were the conditions for commerce: The South was the chief source of cotton and naval stores, and it was in desperate need of manufactured articles in a great variety. The blockade stopped all lawful traffic between it and the rest of the world. The cotton for the mills of the world was shut off. The mills of France and England were shut down for want of raw material, and people starved to death in England because the mills were shut down, and there was no way in which the unfortunate operators could get money for food. We can afford to recall this fact when we feel embittered by the attitude of a certain part of the English people toward us during our struggle for national life. In Lancashire, England, no less than ten million dollars had been given away by relief committees to the starving mill hands within two years after the war began. Moreover, the English government was not always one-sided, as will appear further on.
The price of cotton rose to a level that now seems fabulous in the markets of the world. The prices of the goods that the people of the South were accustomed to import rose as rapidly there, while munitions of war commanded any price that might be asked by one who could supply them. Here was a chance for profit such as the world had not seen since the wars of Napoleon, and greed is the steam that turns the wheels of commerce.
Just off the Southern coast lay the Bahama Islands, while the Bermudas were but a day’s sail farther away. It is 674 miles from Bermuda to Wilmington, and 515 from Nassau to Charleston—three days’ run, or less, in either case. Here were neutral ports to serve as a basis for the contraband trade, and thither the contraband traders flocked as the pirates of old swarmed about Jamaica.