Civil War Blockade Papers

It was the blockade after all.
Lincoln declared his blockade. President Davis had several responses, including embargoing trade with the US. People in Kentucky saw that immediately, and one of the 9 states with enough slaves to secede over, and a wealthy enough economy to make a difference, did not secede. People knew that what no trade with the US would mean, and did not like it in the state of Henry Clay and internal improvements.
River traffic was blocked at Cairo and Columbus. This was a general interruption of the commerce of the Midwest to New Orleans, and New Orleans to New York, and New York to the Midwest. Without this commerce, the very strong revenue system of New Orleans stagnated. Then the US blockaded New Orleans, than they captured the port and its sugar and cotton handling warehouses, and eventually restored down river traffic, at least as to coal and salt.
By the middle of 1862, the US had possession of Kentucky and Missouri, and strong positions in Tennessee, Virginia, and No. Carolina.
In coming traffic from European suppliers was conducted by smugglers. Smugglers charge outrageous prices.
The bigger affect was that in 1863, as the US extended its conquered territory, ordinary people went from inside the blockade zone to back into the regular US trade zone. There was little effort made to get back into the blockade zone. In contrast, Memphis did a good business circumventing the blockade, selling cotton north and bringing salt and clothing into the Confederacy. They did not want to be moved back into the blockade zone.
The blockade runners have to concentrate on items that have a high ratio of value/weight. That excludes railroad iron, but also work clothes, work boots, and farm tools. The plantations and family farms then divert time into making up for those missing items or simply decreasing the work accomplished.
The final affect, mostly invisible, is how many white people refugeed beyond the reach of the blockade. The demographics of the south in 1870 support the inference that refugees went to Texas, Kentucky and US occupied Tennessee. Getting beyond the reach of Confederate conscription and into an area where there was bread to eat may have been the motivation.
When foreign immigration restarted in 1863, and freed people began to support the US military effort, white people in the south had to be responding to the same incentives and voting with their feet.
 
It was the blockade after all.
Lincoln declared his blockade. President Davis had several responses, including embargoing trade with the US. People in Kentucky saw that immediately, and one of the 9 states with enough slaves to secede over, and a wealthy enough economy to make a difference, did not secede. People knew that what no trade with the US would mean, and did not like it in the state of Henry Clay and internal improvements.
River traffic was blocked at Cairo and Columbus. This was a general interruption of the commerce of the Midwest to New Orleans, and New Orleans to New York, and New York to the Midwest. Without this commerce, the very strong revenue system of New Orleans stagnated. Then the US blockaded New Orleans, than they captured the port and its sugar and cotton handling warehouses, and eventually restored down river traffic, at least as to coal and salt.
By the middle of 1862, the US had possession of Kentucky and Missouri, and strong positions in Tennessee, Virginia, and No. Carolina.
In coming traffic from European suppliers was conducted by smugglers. Smugglers charge outrageous prices.
The bigger affect was that in 1863, as the US extended its conquered territory, ordinary people went from inside the blockade zone to back into the regular US trade zone. There was little effort made to get back into the blockade zone. In contrast, Memphis did a good business circumventing the blockade, selling cotton north and bringing salt and clothing into the Confederacy. They did not want to be moved back into the blockade zone.
The blockade runners have to concentrate on items that have a high ratio of value/weight. That excludes railroad iron, but also work clothes, work boots, and farm tools. The plantations and family farms then divert time into making up for those missing items or simply decreasing the work accomplished.
The final affect, mostly invisible, is how many white people refugeed beyond the reach of the blockade. The demographics of the south in 1870 support the inference that refugees went to Texas, Kentucky and US occupied Tennessee. Getting beyond the reach of Confederate conscription and into an area where there was bread to eat may have been the motivation.
When foreign immigration restarted in 1863, and freed people began to support the US military effort, white people in the south had to be responding to the same incentives and voting with their feet.
The blockade could never have kept out high value merchandise. It was designed to cut off the Confederacy from direct and efficient trade with New York city, and to stop bulk cargoes from moving down the Mississippi.
The effect on fighting may not have been large. The effect which individuals, cities, counties and then whole states, just gave up on the Confederacy. There were reasons why when the battle for survival began in 1864, the US was only fighting the five Atlantic states and Alabama.
 
It was designed to cut off the Confederacy from direct and efficient trade with New York city, and to stop bulk cargoes from moving down the Mississippi.

I'll need to differ with you. While control of the Mississippi was unquestionably a major Union war aim, the blockade per se had nothing to do with it.

The legal basis for the blockade was given as the collection of revenue duties, but its real strategic goals were to 1) contain the activity of Confederate privateers and naval vessels; 2) establish a legal "border" vis-a-vis other countries; 3) reduce the amount of war materiel available to the Confederacy; and 4) injure the Confederate economy.
 
I don't divide the control of the internal rivers from the coastal blockade, but a person might view them as separate operations.
Your number 3) is consistent with making Memphis the main smuggling center, as opposed to the Atlantic ports or Mobile, AL. In Memphis there was some constraint on what went into the Confederacy.
 
The structure of the US economy in 1860 was not mysterious. This ranking of cities was published in 1866. The war was over. The list reveals how complete the US controlled the entire economy after 14 months.
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I left Richmond/Petersburg off the excerpt, but they were very important places. Because New York/Brooklyn/Newark were virtually one place, which included the other cities in Queens and no. NJ, there were fewer than 15 places that mattered.
The US military program, banking program, and the TCRR program as initially conceived, were designed to control or build support in these 13 places.
As an example, why not just build a TCRR straight out from Rock Island and Davenport? Because that leaves St. Louis, Sacramento and the New York shipping industry out of the plan.
 
It is probable that the US had a limited number of places in Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri and Louisiana, that it desired to control to prevent the construction of gunboats and raiders in the Confederacy. That program would have an internal part and a coastal part, as in the American part of the War of 1812.
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Who in the US would have been aware of those issues? Probably Winfield Scott and David Farragut.
 
Civil War Blockade-Running at Jupiter Inlet: 1861-1865
By Robert I. Davidsson

'While there were no land battles fought in the Palm Beaches during the Civil War, for nearly four years a deadly game of hide-and-seek, pitting Confederate and British blockade runners against U.S. Navy coastal patrol boats, was waged near the Jupiter Inlet and Narrows.

Navy “Official Records” list forty-seven blockade runners schooners, sloops, and steam-powered vessels as captured or destroyed between Cape Canaveral and Jupiter Inlet. A small flotilla of six Union gunboats on patrol along the southeast coast of Florida captured twenty-four vessels in the vicinity of the Jupiter Inlet.'


http://www.pbchistoryonline.org/uploads/file/Civil War Blockade-Running at Jupiter Inlet 1861-1865.pdf
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Cheers,
USS ALASKA
Great article. Note the most successful USN patrol boat in Florida wss the Sagamore who's second in command was a Confederate defector who was a former Confederate Colonel of a Confederate Militia Regiment. Unionist knowledge of the Florida coast would be invaluable has navigation of the coast was dangerous.
Leftyhunter
 
The blockade had a coastal operation and an interior component. Both components had to work together.
The coastal component was never going to stop all the smuggling. It had to do two things:
1. Stop direct traffic from New York City to the Atlantic ports of Confederacy. No matter what the smugglers did, they were not going to offer the prices, variety, and credit terms that New York City could offer. Three of the critical items that the Confederacy was not going to able to get from smugglers were locomotives, car wheels and rolled iron.
2. Stop trade at New Orleans. New Orleans was uniquely situated to collect freight from a vast continental area, and import freight from the Caribbean and South America. Without that trade the revenue system of New Orleans and its strong banking system were not available to the Confederacy. The US achieved this first by occupying Ship Island. Then it got naval vessels into the main channel of the Mississippi. Then Farragut ran past the forts, and Butler entered the city. But the US did not stop until down river traffic was restored.
 
The interior component of the blockade was dependent on controlling the river transfer points in the area west of the Appalachians. Those would include Wheeling, Parkersburg, Cincinnati/Covington, Louisville, Quincy/Hannibal, Cairo/Paducah, and St. Louis. If the US controlled these points, the movement of consumer goods, wheat/flour, cotton fabric, soap and candles, and salt, into the Confederacy would be controlled by the US. It would not make much sense to blockade the coasts, and let the material that was being barred at the coasts to flow down the rivers and railroads.
 
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The largest salt works in what was categorized as the south in 1860 were in the Kanawa Valley of western Virginia. When the US captured these counties, the Confederacy began to have a problem with salt. Salt can be made in many places. During the Civil War, new salt works were opened in Michigan. However the production of salt requires manpower, and coal or firewood. So the interior blockade produces another strain on the Confederacies limited labor pool.
 
In reply to Blockades during the Civil War,my 3rd Great uncle, Commander Charles Henry Poor was the subject of a Naval General Court Martial, assembled in Washington, DC, on Nov. 18. 1861, of which he a document printed with regard to his defence, in brief summary.
" May it please the Court: I am arraigned before you upon a charge of neglecting my duty while engaged in blockading the Mississippi" On reading further it is noted that this dealt with the Blockade runner, the Sumter being pursued by the USS Brooklyn, the Sumter having superior speed whilst the Brooklyn was to suffer a breakdown, where sufficient steam pressure could not be maintained.

Other notes from this same document.
"In the first I am charged with leaving my station and duty of blockading the Mississippi River: and in the fourth I am charged with failing to continue the chase of the Sumter while there was a reasonable chance of success.
I am conscious of no neglect of duty. In my honest efforts to perform it, events occurred beyond my control and totally unforseen, which enabled the rebel steamer Sumter to escape in spite of my most earnest efforts to prevent it.

Thanking the Court for its patient hearing of this case, and its courteous indulgence, I respectfully submit this, my defence, signed C.H. Poor, Commander USN


Poor, Charles H.
Midshipman, 1 March, 1825. Passed Midshipman, 4 June, 1831.
Lieutenant, 22 December, 1835.
Commander, 14 September, 1855.
Captain, 16 July, 1862.
Commodore, 2 January, 1863.
Rear Admiral, 20 September, 1868.
Retired List, 9 June, 1870.
Died 5 November 1882.

Notes about the CSS Sumter
CSS Sumter, a 473-ton bark-rigged screw steam cruiser, was built as the merchant steamship Habana at Philadelphia in 1859 for McConnell's New Orleans & Havana Line. Purchased by the Confederate Government at New Orleans in April 1861, she was converted to a cruiser and placed under the command of Raphael Semmes. Renamed Sumter, she was commissioned in the Confederate Navy on 3 June 1861 and broke through the Federal blockade of the Mississippi River mouth late in that month.

Eluding the sloop-of-war USS Brooklyn in hot pursuit, early in July, the pioneering Confederate Navy commerce raider captured eight U.S. flag merchant ships in waters near Cuba, then moved to the south to Maranhão, Brazil coast where she took two more

The USS Brooklyn weighed roughly five times as much as CSS Sumter and the federal ship's main battery of one 10-inch and twenty 9-inch Dahlgren guns dwarfed the Confederate vessel's armament of one 8-inch smoothbore gun and four 32-pounders. As designed, the Brooklyn was also a knot-and-a-half faster at 11.5 knots than the Sumter's 10 knots top speed. If the Brooklyn caught the Sumter, her heavier gun battery could reduce the Southern vessel to kindling in short order. But the Brooklyn had been on station for many months and had not been serviced recently--she had a dirty bottom and was not in top form at the end of June 1861.

The USS Brooklyn was a very powerful steam sloop of war. Weighing in at more than 2,500 tons, she carried twenty 9-inch guns on her broadsides and a single 10-inch gun as a pivot.

The Mississippi River does not have a single mouth. Instead, the Mississippi Delta extends into the Gulf of Mexico and the river forks into several passes, each of which allowed ships of various sizes access to the gulf from the Mississippi River. The geography of the Mississippi Delta made it difficult for a single ship to blockade New Orleans, as one ship could only cover one of the passes. In this report, Commander Charles Henry Poor lays out some of the many difficulties of the blockade.

U.S. STEAM SLOOP BROOKLYN,
Off Pass a l'Outre, May 29, 1861.

SIR: I have the honor to report that I captured as a prize the barkentine H. B. Spearing, of and for New Orleans, with a cargo of coffee from Rio de Janeiro. I have placed a prize crew on board in charge of Midshipman Manley and Boatswain Bartlett, with orders to proceed to Key West for adjudication.

I hope the Department will find it convenient to send additional men and officers to this ship, as her efficiency will be much affected by reducing her complement of either, especially the former.

I arrived off the Pass a l'Outre on the 26th instant and sent in a notification of a rigid blockade, allowing fifteen days to neutrals to depart, with or without cargo. In this I followed the precedent established at Pensacola. Under the head of neutrals I class the vessels of all nationalities at peace with the United States. I found several American vessels on the bar; all of them had loaded and cleared before the proclamation of blockade was issued, but having no instructions or precedent to except American vessels so circumstanced, I have given them the usual warning not to leave. They appear to be bona fide United States vessels and their cargoes are mostly, if not entirely, foreign property.

If they are compelled to remain they may fall into the hands of the enemy, and if I capture them for violating the blockade there is a great doubt of their condemnation, and I shall have to weaken my ship by placing prize crews on board, with officers to take charge of them. In either case I think the United States will suffer more than the other party. I should like to have more definite instructions with reference to such cases. It has happened also that emigrant vessels have arrived short of provisions and water. To turn them off without supplying them with provisions is not only inhuman, but might subject them, among whom are women and children, to starvation. I cannot well spare provisions from this ship, and it is impossible for them to procure them at New Orleans. I should like to know what course I am to pursue in such cases, especially when the vessels only contain passengers.

Several captures have been made by private armed steamers under the secession flag. Since my arrival they keep well up the river out of my reach. There is not water enough for this vessel to cross the bar, and if there was I could not take her through the intricate channel of the river without a pilot.

Without other vessels the blockade, I fear, will not be considered a legal one, as there are three or four entrances to watch. I can only guard the principal one (Pass a l'Outre), the only one at this time accessible to large vessels. Light-draft, swift steamers, with a gun or two of long range, are much needed, and I think it would require at least four vessels to effectually blockade the mouths of the Mississippi and New Orleans. The Powhatan is off Mobile.

It will soon be necessary to supply this ship with coal.

Vessels are often detained on the bar, waiting for a rise to get over, for several weeks. One English ship remains fast in the mud, with a cargo she took on board two months or more since. Do vessels under such circumstances come under the strict rule of blockade?

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

C.H. POOR, Commander.


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If the US was going to limit the role of Confederate gunboats and ironclads on the internal rivers, it had a limited number of places it had to control.
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Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri specialized in manufacturing steamships. And the tonnage was substantial. Destroying the enemies manufacturing cities is one way to win a war. But in a Civil War, the object of strategy should be to capture those cities and wrap their capacity into your base. If those cities have a loyalist element, its just that much easier. What you want, in a Civil War, is for your generals to be banqueted in cities that were thought of as part of the other sides territory.
 
For fans of Dr. Surdam @DaveBrt / @JohnDLittlefield - his paper prior to the book...

Naval War College Review
Volume 51
Number 4 Autumn Article 7
1998
The Union Navy's Blockade Reconsidered
by David G. Surdam

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected].

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https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2813&context=nwc-review
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Cheers,
USS ALASKA
The impact of the blockade was felt after it was perfected, between August 1864 and April 1865. It produced economic ruin in the Confederacy, particularly the period of non maintenance of the railroad system, was extended into 1865.
That created a time span of about 24 months in which the former Confederates could not keep a large force organized to restart the war. In that window the US occupied Texas, and aided the Mexican republicans in expelling the French.
In that window, the Republicans, in the US govt and in finance used the western railroads to aid their friends in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada and California.
Other railroads in Maryland and Kentucky, that were paid for their services by the US govt during the war, repaired their lines and expanded at the expense of railroads further south.
 
Since the British had adjusted to the unavailability of Confederate cotton by finding suppliers in Egypt and India, there was no crisis at the end of the US Civil War. In the recovery period of 1865-1869, neither old England nor New England were overly concerned with helping the southern cotton growers get back on their feet. The supply of cotton recovered adequately without investment by the mills. This prolonged the period of low investment in the south, and by 1879, the southern states were far behind the rest of the US, without a clear way to catch up.
 
The blockade was surely going to work. Here are the very approximate leading industries of 1860:
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If wheat and flour stopped moving down the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and down the Mississippi below Cairo, the southwestern states were going to notice the difference with respect to flour prices.
Sugar production in the US was centered in Louisiana and shipped from New Orleans. As soon as the US had ships in the main channel of the Mississippi, the movement of sugar was going to slow down.
Salt on the other hand, came from New York, the Kanawa Valley of Virginia, and from select places in Ohio. The concentration of the salt brine that could be accessed by wells, made a significant impact on the availability and cost of the salt.
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Common sense states that flour, sugar and salt, the three kitchen staples, are all going to be effected by the blockade program. If a person wants to separate the internal blockade from the coastal blockade, that is OK.
The people in Kentucky, Tennessee, in New Orleans knew the difference between being in the US trade zone, and in the blockaded Confederacy.
 
With respect to cotton, the raw cotton already in England or New York was durable and could be held for speculation. Cotton thread and cotton fabric was durable and did not depreciate rapidly. Cotton in the hands of consumers was not a single use item. It did not suddenly disappear in 5 months.
The woolen industry could partially substitute for cotton in some uses, and cotton, partially competitive with Confederate cotton could be produced in India and Egypt.
If necessary the world could have increased linen production, and for decorative purposes, silk production was still available.
 
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Given that the copper ore in Michigan was more plentiful and of much greater value, these statistics suggest that the Confederacy soon became dependent on the blockade runners for percussion caps. When they came through, the Confederates could fight. When the blockade runners had to evade or escape, or were wrecked or captured, the Generals had to be careful.
 
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Given that the copper ore in Michigan was more plentiful and of much greater value, these statistics suggest that the Confederacy soon became dependent on the blockade runners for percussion caps. When they came through, the Confederates could fight. When the blockade runners had to evade or escape, or were wrecked or captured, the Generals had to be careful.
Just want to say, Wausau Bob, that all of this has been very helpful to me as I set up my imaginary blockade running business (through Wilmington) in my civil war novel. Helps to know what the South was desperate for and when. Really appreciate all of the charts etc.
 
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