One major maritime strategy of
the Union forces during the Civil War was a blockade. The purpose of the
blockade
was basically the same as that of a medieval siege. The besieged enemy
cannot replenish its sources from the outside while it is surrounded.
Therefore, they will use up all of their stored
supplies and be forced to
either surrender or die of hunger. Similarly, a blockade stops a country from
importing food and arms while ceasing exports too. As exports stop, the country
grows poorer and has less money with which to produce or purchase more
supplies. While land routes are still sometimes an option for supplies, an army
without money has no means of getting food except by ravishing their own land.
This downward spiral leads to a land without food, in horrific debt, and
physically in ruins. The Union desired this outcome from their blockading
efforts as a means to end the War of Secession. Although the Confederates were
often able to sneak through the lines, on a whole the plan worked, was a
deciding factor in the Civil War, and strengthened the modern Navy.
On April 19th, 1861,
President Abraham Lincoln declares a
proclamation calling for “a military and
commercial blockade of our Southern ports.” At this point in the war, the Union
navy was ill prepared for a blockade. It consisted of 42 commissioned warships
– only four of which were not presently at distant stations. Soon after, on May
27th of the same year, Lincoln amended his proclamation with a new
one that extended the blockade up and down the Atlantic Coast, “from the Capes
of Virginia to the Rio Grande.” It did not take the Union long to realize that
it did not own enough warships to create more that a “paper” blockade. Five years previously, the five Great Powers of
Europe, with the help of Turkey and Sardinia, decided at the Congress of Paris
that “blockades, in order to be binding must be effective, that is to say,
maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the
enemy”<1>.
Obviously, 42 ships could not be completely “effective” since the Southern
coast consists of 189 harbors spread over 3,549 miles, not even including the
hundreds of coves and inlets that could be employed by the smaller blockade
runners<2>.
A decision of such magnitude as that of a blockade required the power to back
it up.
<1> Jefferson
Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (New York: T.
Yoseloff, 1958) 314-15.
<2> James
Sprunt, Chronicles of the Cape Fear River (Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton, 1916) 238-40.