years. Mississippi river steamers were armed with heavy guns and protected by armour, boiler-plates, cotton bales, &c., and some fast cruisers were constructed for ocean work, one of them actually reaching the high speed of 17·75 m. per hour. The existing Federal navy of 1861 already included some large and powerful modern vessels, such as the “Minnesota” and “Powhatan.” To oppose them the Confederates, limited as they were for means, managed to construct various ironclads, and to improvise a considerable fleet of minor vessels, and, though a fighting navy never assembled under a Confederate flag-officer, the Southern warships found another more damaging and more profitable scope for their activity. It has been said that the blockade of the Confederate coast became in the end practically impenetrable, and that every attempt of the Confederate naval forces to break out was checked at once by crushing numerical preponderance. The exciting and profitable occupation of blockade-running led to countless small fights off the various harbours, and sometimes the United States navy had to fight a more serious action when some new “rebel” ironclad emerged from her harbour, inlet or sound.
38. Fort Fisher.—Many of the greater combats in which the navy was engaged on the coast and inland have been referred to above, and the fighting before Charleston, New Orleans, Mobile and Vicksburg is described in separate articles. One of the heaviest of the battles was fought at Fort Fisher in 1864. This place guarded the approaches to Wilmington, North Carolina. Troops under Butler and a large fleet under Admiral Porter were destined for this enterprise. An incendiary vessel was exploded close to the works without effect on the 23rd–24th of December, and the ships engaged on the 24th. The next day the troops were disembarked, only to be called off after a partial assault. Butler then withdrew, and Porter was informed on the 31st that “a competent force properly commanded” would be sent out. On the 8th of January 1865 General Terry arrived with the land forces, and the armada arrived off Fisher on the 12th. On the 13th, 6000 men were landed, covered by the guns of the fleet, and, after Porter had subjected the works to a terrific bombardment, Fisher was brilliantly carried by storm on the 15th. Reinforcements arriving, the whole force then marched inland to meet Sherman.
39. Other Naval Actions.—Apart from this, and other actions referred to, two incidents of the coast war call for notice—the career of the “Albemarle” and the duel between the “Atlanta” and the “Weehawken.” The ironclad ram “Albemarle,” built at Edwards’ Ferry on the Roanoke river, had done considerable damage to the Federal vessels which, since Burnside’s expedition to Newberne, had cruised in Albemarle Sound, and in 1864 a force of double-enders and gunboats, under Captain Melancton Smith, U.S.N., was given the special task of destroying the rebel ram. A naval battle was fought on the 5th of May 1864, in which the double-ender “Sassacus” most gallantly rammed the “Albemarle” and was disabled alongside her, and Smith’s vessel and others, unarmoured as they were, fought the ram at close quarters. After this the ironclad retired upstream, where she was eventually destroyed in the most daring manner by a boat’s crew under Lieutenant W. B. Cushing. Making his way up the Roanoke as far as Plymouth he there sank the ironclad at her wharf by exploding a spar-torpedo (October 27). On the 17th of June 1863 after a brief action the monitor “Weehawken” captured the Confederate ironclad “Atlanta” in Wassaw Sound, South Carolina. This duel resembled in its attendant circumstances the famous fight of the “Chesapeake” and the “Shannon.” Captain John Rodgers, like Broke, was one of the best officers, and the “Weehawken,” like the “Shannon,” was known as one of the smartest ships in the service. Five heavy accurate shots from the Federal’s turret guns crushed the enemy in a few minutes.
40. The Commerce-Destroyers.—Letters of marque were issued to Confederate privateers as early as April 1861, and Federal commerce at once began to suffer. When, however, surveillance became blockade, prizes could only with difficulty be brought into port, and, since the parties interested gained nothing by burning merchantmen, privateering soon died out, and was replaced by commerce-destroying pure and simple, carried out by commissioned vessels of the Confederate navy. Captain Raphael Semmes of the C.S.S. “Sumter” made a successful cruise on the high seas, and before she was abandoned at Gibraltar had made seventeen prizes. Unable to build at home, the Confederates sought warships abroad, evading the obligations of neutrality by various ingenious expedients. The “Florida” (built at Liverpool in 1861–1862) crossed the Atlantic, refitted at Mobile, escaped the blockaders, and fulfilled the instructions which, as her captain said, “left much to the discretion but more to the torch.” She was captured by the U.S.S. “Wachusett” in the neutral harbour of Bahia (October 7, 1862). The most successful of the foreign-built cruisers was the famous “Alabama,” commanded by Semmes and built at Liverpool. In the course of her career she burned or brought into port seventy prizes, fought and sank the U.S.S. “Hatteras” off Galveston, and was finally sunk by the U.S.S. “Kearsarge,” Captain Winslow, off Cherbourg (June 19, 1864). The career of another promising cruiser, the “Nashville,” was summarily ended by the Federal monitor “Montauk” (February 28, 1863). The “Shenandoah” was burning Union whalers in the Bering Sea when the war came to an end. None of the various “rams” built abroad for the “rebel” government ever came into action. The difficulties of coaling and the obligations of neutrality hampered these commerce-destroyers as much as the Federal vessels that were chasing them, but, in spite of drawbacks, the guerre de course was the most successful warlike operation undertaken by the Confederacy. The mercantile marine of the United States was almost driven off the high seas by the terror of these destructive cruisers.
41. Cost of the War.—The total loss of life in the Union forces during the four years of war was 359,528, and of the many thousands discharged from the services as disabled or otherwise unfit, a large number died in consequence of injuries or disease incurred in the army. The estimate of 500,000 in all may be taken as approximately correct. The same number is given as that of the Southern losses, which of course fell upon a much smaller population. The war expenditure of the Federal government has been estimated at $3,400,000,000; the very large sums devoted to the pensions of widows, disabled men, &c., are not included in this amount (Dodge). In 1879 an estimate made of all Federal war expenses up to that date, including pension charges, interest on loans, &c., showed a total of $6,190,000,000 (Dewey, Financial History of the United States).
Bibliography.—The United States government’s Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (70 vols., most of which are divided into two or three “parts,” and atlas, 1880–1900) include every important official document of either side that it was possible to obtain in the course of many years’ work. A similar but less voluminous work is the Records of the Union and Confederate Navies (1894–); The Rebellion Record (1862–1868), edited by F. W. Moore, a contemporary collection, has been superseded to a great extent by the official records, but is still valuable as a collection of unofficial documents of all kinds. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1887–1889) is a series of papers, covering the whole war, written by the prominent commanders of both sides. The sixteen volumes of the Campaigns of the Civil War (1881–1882) and the Navy in the Civil War (1883) (written by various authors) are of very unequal merit, but several of the volumes are indispensable to the study of the Civil War. Of general works the following are the best:—Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America, translated from the French (1875–1888); Horace Greeley, The American Conflict (1864–1866); J. Scheibert, Der Bürgerkrieg i. d. Nordam. Freistaaten (Berlin, 1874); Wood and Edmonds, Civil War in the United States (London, 1905); T. A. Dodge, Bird’s Eye View of our Civil War (revised edition, 1887); E. A. Pollard, A Southern History of the War (1866). The contemporary accounts mentioned should be studied with caution. Of critical works, J. C. Ropes, The Story of the Civil War (1894–1898); G. F. R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (London, 1898) and The Science of War, chapters viii. and ix. (London, 1905); C. C. Chesney, Essays in Military Biography (1874); Freytag-Loringhoven, Studien über Kriegführung, 1861–1865 (Berlin, 1901–1903), are the most important. Publications of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts (vols. i.-x., 1881 onwards) also comprise critical accounts of nearly all the important campaigns. A critical account of the Virginian operations and the Chickamauga campaign is Gen. E. P. Alexander’s Military Memoirs of a Confederate (1906). C. R. Cooper, Chronological and Alphabetical Record of the Great Civil War (Milwaukee, 1904) may be mentioned as a work of reference.
