Atlantic Warfare Yesterday : 381 



Thereafter Merrimac confined her operations to a patrol of the 

 James River, thus protecting the approach to Richmond. At the same 

 time Monitor was performing similar duties with respect to the Poto- 

 mac and the approaches to Washington. Later in the war Merrimac 

 was scuttled and sunk. After this an attempt was made to move Mon- 

 itor but she went down with all hands in a gale off Cape Hatteras. 

 Together, the two famous ironclads did much to demonstrate the 

 futility of the old-fashioned wooden warship and the value of protec- 

 tive armor and of steam propulsion. 



The naval war then settled down into a long and systematic 

 attempt of the Northern navy to establish a complete blockade of the 

 Southern ports and the desperate effort on the part of the Confeder- 

 acy to nullify this blockade. The establishment of such a blockade is 

 a long and tedious undertaking and in this case, as in others, de- 

 manded an enormous fleet of ships and a tremendous complement 

 of men. Lincoln proclaimed the blockade in April of '61 with a sup- 

 plementary proclamation covering the coasts of Virginia and North 

 Carolina in May of the same year. In theory the blockade, therefore, 

 extended from the Virginia capes to Mexico at the Rio Grande, thus 

 covering a coastline of over 3,500 miles. 



At the beginning the North did not have enough ships to make the 

 blockade truly effective, therefore, from the point of view of inter- 

 national law, there was doubt about its legality. Europe was deeply 

 involved in the success or failure of this blockade for European coun- 

 tries including Britain, France, Holland and Spain had built up enor- 

 mous trade with the Southern states. For example, in the year i860 

 Britain alone bought $20,000,000 worth of Southern tobacco and on 

 this collected import duties of $21,000,000. France and Holland ab- 

 sorbed comparable amounts and even Spain accounted for $5,000,000. 

 Southern cotton sold in England in the amount of $150,000,000 and 

 a large population was employed in England in the spinning and 

 manufacture of this cotton. 



The outbreak of the Civil War was, therefore, of great importance 

 to a number of European nations and it initiated in Europe a long- 

 drawn-out conflict of interests. For a time there was uncertainty as 

 to where Great Britain's sympathies rested and what part, if any, she 

 would play in the conflict. The South believed that the products and 

 materials which she supplied to Great Britain were of such economic 

 value that Britain might take steps to protect her trade and manufac- 

 tures and might even recognize the Confederacy as a free and inde- 

 pendent nation. 



