The Blockade and The Cruisers; The Navy in the Civil War--I

Harrisburg, PA: The Archive Society, 1992. Facsimile Reprint Edition. Hardcover. Very good. viii, [2], 257, [1] pages. Maps. Decorative endpapers. Gilt-edged. Occasional footnotes. Appendices. Index. James Russell Soley (1 October 1850 - 11 September 1911) was a lawyer and Naval historian and an Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the U.S. Navy. Soley graduated from Harvard College in 1870. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Ethics and English at the United States Naval Academy on 1 October 1871. Only two years later, he became Head of the Department of English Studies, History, and Law. He served as Superintendent of the naval war records office and he headed the Navy Department's Office of Naval Records and Library. Soley began the collection of the naval documents of the American Civil War and started the editorial work which culminated in the publication of the 31-volume collection, The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. These years also saw the publication of several of Soley's books and articles on American naval history. In 1884, Commodore Stephen B. Luce appointed Soley instructor in International Law at the newly established United States Naval War College, thereby becoming that institution's first civilian faculty member. While serving in Washington, D.C., Soley studied law at Columbian University (now called George Washington University) and received his law degree in 1890. On 18 July 1890 he resigned his commission to become an Assistant Secretary of the Navy, dealing with administration of labor in naval shore establishments. He served in this position until March 1893. The Union blockade in the American Civil War was a naval strategy by the United States to prevent the Confederacy from trading. The blockade was proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln in April 1861, and required the monitoring of 3,500 miles of Atlantic and Gulf coastline, including 12 major ports, notably New Orleans and Mobile. Those blockade runners fast enough to evade the Union Navy could only carry a small fraction of the supplies needed. They were operated largely by British citizens, making use of neutral ports such as Havana, Nassau and Bermuda. The Union commissioned around 500 ships, which destroyed or captured about 1,500 blockade runners over the course of the war. The Union blockade was a powerful weapon that eventually ruined the Southern economy, at the cost of very few lives. The measure of the blockade's success was not the few ships that slipped through, but the thousands that never tried it. Ordinary freighters had no reasonable hope of evading the blockade and stopped calling at Southern ports. The interdiction of coastal traffic meant that long-distance travel depended on the rickety railroad system, which never overcame the devastating impact of the blockade. Throughout the war, the South produced enough food for civilians and soldiers, but it had growing difficulty in moving surpluses to areas of scarcity and famine. Lee's army, at the end of the supply line, nearly always was short of supplies as the war progressed into its final two years. When the blockade began in 1861, it was only partially effective. It has been estimated that only one in ten ships trying to evade the blockade were intercepted. However, the Union Navy gradually increased in size throughout the war, and was able to drastically reduce shipments into Confederate ports. By 1864, one in every three ships attempting to run the blockade were being intercepted. In the final two years of the war, the only ships with a reasonable chance of evading the blockade were blockade runners specifically designed for speed. The Union naval ships enforcing the blockade were divided into squadrons based on their area of operation.The blockade almost totally choked off Southern cotton exports, which the Confederacy depended on for hard currency. Cotton exports fell 95%, from 10 million bales in the three years prior to the war to just 500,000 bales during the blockade period. The blockade also largely reduced imports of food, medicine, war materials, manufactured goods, and luxury items, resulting in severe shortages and inflation. Shortages of bread led to occasional bread riots in Richmond and other cities, showing that patriotism was not sufficient to satisfy the daily demands of the people. Land routes remained open for cattle drovers, but after the Union seized control of the Mississippi River in summer 1863, it became impossible to ship horses, cattle and swine from Texas and Arkansas to the eastern Confederacy. The blockade was a triumph of the Union Navy and a major factor in winning the war.