Starting in 1861, the Union blockade
was meant to stop Southern commerce and hurt the Confederacy during the Civil
War. In response, Confederate blockade runners worked to bring much needed
supplies to the struggling Confederacy. Learn about the blockade and blockade
runners in this lesson.
Civil War
By April of
1861, of the 33 states in the Union, seven had seceded and joined the
Confederacy. Once the first shots of the war were fired in Charleston Harbor on
April 12th, President Abraham Lincoln called for thousands of volunteers to put
down the rebellion, and four more states left and entered into the Confederate
ranks. For Lincoln and the Union government, this was a terrible situation.
The new
Confederacy comprised a sizable portion of the United States, and something had
to be done to bring the South back into the Union. One of the first measures
which Lincoln and his government took to do this was to affect a blockade
on the entire Confederacy, attempting to shut off the Confederacy from all
trade and commerce. Let's learn more to see whether or not this tactic was
successful.
The Strategy of Blockades
Blockading
is an old naval tactic that has been used throughout the years by various
nations in attempts to starve, outlast, or simply destroy their enemies.
Blockades are meant to prevent ships from reaching enemy ports with goods,
food, supplies, or support of any kind.
In 1861,
when the Civil War began, the South was far behind the North when it came to
industry, manufacturing, and goods. This meant that the Confederacy would have
a more difficult time obtaining the materials necessary to wage a war, such as
weapons and ammunition. The South's main economic staple was its cotton crop,
grown and picked largely by slave labor. Money from cotton made the South a
player on the world stage because countries such as England and France used
Southern cotton in their textile mills.
A blockade
against the Confederacy would theoretically hurt the South's economy by
damaging trade. It would also make it more difficult for the South to acquire
food to feed its civilian population. Thus, there were clearly several good
reasons for the Union government to blockade the Confederacy.
For the
Confederacy, this was a frightening scenario. In the early days of the Civil
War, Confederate President Jefferson Davis offered to issue letters of
marque authorizing private ships to transport goods for the Confederacy,
dealing with the South's deficiency in naval and transportation ships.
Blockading the Confederacy
On April
19, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln announced the federal blockade of the
Confederacy. This was one major feature of the plan put out by General Winfield
Scott, the General-in-Chief of Union forces at the start of the Civil War.
Scott's plan, known by its moniker the Anaconda Plan, called for the
Union to blockade the South and seize the Mississippi River, in effect
strangling the Southern states. While the Anaconda Plan was never fully
adopted, the blockade was a central feature of this plan and Union strategy
early on in the war.
The Union
blockade was to cover over 3,500 miles of seashore along the Atlantic and Gulf
coastlines. Among the many port cities affected by the blockade were
Wilmington, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; Mobile, Alabama; and
New Orleans, Louisiana. In order to accomplish this goal, however, the United
States Navy had to drastically increase in size and strength. The Navy
ballooned from less than 9,000 men in the antebellum years to over 24,000 at
the end of 1861. The blockade was carried out with squadrons set up at various
points along the Confederate coast line. These were groups responsible for
monitoring specific areas.
During the
course of the Union blockade, the U.S. Navy had several notable victories and
accomplishments. One of the biggest, and perhaps notable, occurred in April
1862 when two major victories occurred. First, in early April, Savannah,
Georgia, fell to Union forces when Fort Pulaski surrendered. A few weeks later,
Flag Officer David Farragut led his fleet into New Orleans, capturing
the city that served as one of the most important ports in the entire
Confederacy.
Another
major victory which occurred for the U.S. Navy was in August 1864 when then
Rear Admiral David Farragut seized Mobile, the last Confederate port in
the Gulf of Mexico. These victories made David Farragut one the most important
and prominent naval leaders for the Union during the Civil War.
Fighting the Blockade
The
Confederacy did not sit idle during these years of blockading. The South did
everything possible to circumvent the federal blockade. Ships fast enough to
slip past the U.S. Navy were known as blockade runners, and they were
used widely during the Civil War. Many of them were steam ships built for the
ocean.
The
majority of these ships were not owned by the Confederacy, but rather they were
private ships commandeered into Confederate service with letters of marque,
official documents authorizing the private citizen to attack, capture, or seize
enemy ships on the oceans. Some of these vessels were built in England and used
to transport goods between Great Britain and the South, allowing the British to
continue using some Southern cotton during the Civil War.
Throughout
the war, blockade runners became so important that they were the primary means
of bringing in supplies and goods for the Confederate cause. Often, goods would
be shipped from Great Britain to Nassau or Havana in the Caribbean,
where the Southern blockade runners would acquire the goods, normally dropping
off cotton which would be sent on to Britain. Then, with their material in
stow, the runners would attempt to slip back to Confederate shores. If they
were stopped or seen by Union vessels, the ships would either attempt to evade
them or simply use their steam power to outrun them, speeding away as fast as
possible.
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