382 ! The Atlantic 



The Northern states recognized that in establishing the blockade 

 they inevitably ran the risk of creating a certain amount of hostility 

 in England. The North believed, however, that in the long run Britain 

 would recognize that the termination of the war in a Northern vic- 

 tory would constitute the quickest and soundest condition for the 

 removal of the blockade and the restoration of international com- 

 merce. In the long run Lincoln's confidence in Britain was justified 

 but there were some years of uncertainty and of wavering allegiances. 

 These created the conditions for a number of extraordinary adven- 

 tures on the high seas. 



A Northern fleet operating in the Gulf of Mexico under command 

 of Admiral David G. Farragut was one of the chief instruments for 

 enforcing and extending the theory and practice of the blockade. Far- 

 ragut first showed his audacity and skill by breaking a boom which 

 the Confederates had fastened across the main mouth of the Missis- 

 sippi River and then led his squadron past two forts without stop- 

 ping to capture them and proceeded at once to fight his way up the 

 ninety miles of river that separated him from New Orleans at the 

 same time that the city was being attacked by a land force under Gen- 

 eral B. F. Butler. This was a first and most important step in the 

 establishment of the blockade. 



The intention here was not only to deprive the South of the impor- 

 tant port of New Orleans but also to cut off the equipment and sup- 

 plies that were reaching the South from the states west of the Missis- 

 sippi River and from Mexico. This was a most important action, but 

 as late as 1864 the South had in Mobile, Savannah, Charleston and 

 Wilmington four important ports through which she was able to 

 send out on the blockade runners some proportion of her customary 

 exports and through which she received in exchange supplies and 

 manufactured articles. Farragut's impetuous attack on Mobile made 

 in the summer of 1864, like the taking of New Orleans, was another 

 important step in the establishment of an ironclad blockade. 



The South made two important and valiant attempts to nullify the 

 blockade and to offset the North's great superiority in naval and mari- 

 time strength. The first of these efforts consisted in building up a fleet 

 of blockade running vessels and in establishing blockade running as 

 a systematic combination of business and warfare. The Southern 

 blockade runners began operations as a sincere effort to continue the 

 trade of the South and to supply the Confederacy with needed war 

 equipment and military supplies. 



In the early years of the war evasion of the blockade was relatively 



