The "American Clipper Ships" (vessels propelled entirely by sail power; which for purposes of ocean navigation is now practically obsolete) were considered the perfection of marine architecture, and bore the stars and stripes proudly and triumphantly upon every sea.
Over 2000 establishments were engaged in the shipbuilding industry, giving employment to over 20,000 skilled laborers, whose wages amounted to more than $12,000,000 annually; and who built from $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 worth of vessels each year.
During the ten years immediately preceding the "War of the Rebellion," 67 per cent. of the vessels entering the ports of the United States, carried the American flag; as against 33 per cent. carrying foreign flags.
In 1887 only about 15 per cent. were American, as against 85 per cent. foreign.
Several causes had conspired to bring about this vast and disastrous decline in American ownership.
The first, and most effective of these, unquestionably grew out of the almost unconcealed and anxious efforts of England, to prevent the Northern States from bringing the war to a successful issue, and thus assuring the restoration of the Union.
The cause of this animus on the part of England, was, as is always the case, where any of her interests are involved, a purely and intensely selfish one.
The Northern, and especially the New England States, were mercantile and manufacturing States, and had become formidable rivals to England in the two great interests in which the latter power had hitherto deemed herself unapproachable. The American shipowner outsailed and underbid his English competitor in all parts of the world; and the American manufacturer, by improved methods and ingenious mechanical appliances, had begun to successfully compete with his English rival, not only in American markets, but in foreign ones as well; and Englishmen viewed with unconcealed dismay, the imminent prospect of having their immense carrying trade as well as their enormous manufacturing interests, ruined by the competition of their enterprising and ingenious American rivals.
Indeed, so marked had this development been, that an eminent French writer, De Tocqueville, in a book called "Democracy in America," written nearly twenty years previous to the outbreak of the "War of the Rebellion," in a chapter entitled "Some considerations on the causes of the Commercial prosperity of the United States," wrote as follows:
"The inhabitants of the United States constitute a great civilized people, which fortune has placed in the midst of an uncultivated country, at a distance of three thousand miles from the central point of civilization. America consequently stands in daily need of Europe. The Americans will, no doubt, ultimately succeed in producing or manufacturing at home, most of the articles which they require; but the two continents can never be independent of each other, so numerous are the natural ties between their wants, their ideas, their habits, and their manners. The Union has peculiar commodities which have now become necessary to us, as they cannot be cultivated, or can be raised only at an enormous expense, upon the soil of Europe. The Americans consume only a small portion of this produce, and they are willing to sell us the rest. Europe is therefore the market of America, as America is the market of Europe; and maritime commerce is no less necessary to enable the inhabitants of the United States to transport their raw materials to the ports of Europe, than it is to enable us to supply them with our manufactured produce.