to the limit of their strength, in their anxiety for fathers, brothers and sons at the front, sought solace in lectures, plays, and shows of every description. Every loyal family was a depot for news from the front; letters were ever coming and going, and the last from the soldier boy was given from hand to hand till all had read it or it was printed in the local paper for the general edification. The habit of subscribing to illustrated papers began, and every well-to-do family followed the scenes of the war in Harper's Weekly. Mothers and daughters made delicacies for sick soldiers, on furlough, in the hospital, at the front. The children helped to pack the box which should be sent to father, brother, son, uncle, somewhere far away on the field of battle: tea, sugar, postage-stamps, medicine, books, boots, stockings, stationery, ambrotypes, tin-types, photographs, keepsakes. It was a wonderful box and carried a greater wealth of affection than could be stored in the whole world. And deeper than all was the sympathy and good will which the war called forth at the North: it unified the Nation, it created the American spirit, it discovered the national character. And trains were coming and going, bearing away the flower of youth and bringing the wounded, the dead, and them to whom death would be a release-the spectres and wrecks from Libby Prison and Andersonville.

In the history of nations great events stand out like mountain peaks. The great event of the third year of the war was the Emancipation Proclamation with which the new year opened, but that event, whose significance is yet with us and must continue to the end of time, derives additional meaning from the interpretation which its author later in the year, on a solemn occasion, put upon the war. The world remembers nothing that was said anywhere, at any time, by any person, in extenuation of the Confederacy, but it can never forget what Lincoln said at Gettysburg, at the dedication of a portion of the battlefield, as a National Cemetery, November 19, 1863, in defence and interpretation of the Nation:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting. and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

CHAPTER VII

THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE WAR

IN his message to the Confederate Congress, December 7, 1863, Jefferson Davis remonstrated against the "illegal, Federal paper blockade" of nearly 3000 miles of Confederate coast, remarking on "the absurdity of the pretension" of enforcing such a blockade "with a navy of twenty-four vessels of all classes in commission, of which one-half were in distant seas." President Lincoln, in his message to Congress, December 8, 1863, remarked on the blockade:

"The extensive blockade has been constantly increasing in efficiency, as the navy has expanded; yet on so long a line it has so far been impossible to entirely suppress illicit trade. From returns received at the Navy Department, it appears that more than 1000 vessels have been captured since the blockade was instituted, and that the value of prizes already sent in for adjudication amounts to over $13,000,000. The naval force of the United States consists at this time of 588 vessels, completed and in course of completion, and of these, 75 are iron-clad or armored steamers. The events of the war give an increased interest and importance to the navy which will probably extend beyond the war itself. The armored vessels in our navy, completed and in service, or which are under contract and approaching completion, are believed to exceed in number those of any other power. But while these may be relied upon for harbor defense and coast service, others of greater strength and capacity will be

necessary for cruising purposes, and to maintain our rightful position on the ocean.'

The extraordinary growth of the navy during the war, and especially during the first three years, exemplified the capacity and adaptability of the American people to the demands of a great emergency. When Lincoln was inaugurated there were only about twenty-four serviceable vessels, propelled by steam power, in the navy, and thirteen of these were "on distant foreign stations." The Confederacy had no navy, its fleet consisting of a few harbor vessels which it seized at convenience at the opening of the war. Industrial conditions favored the North and the government immediately began the construction of warships, of varying power, capacity, style and speed, both in the navy yards and by contract with private builders. The Monitor was early designed and completed, and its achievement may be said to have compelled a change in naval architecture throughout the world. Foreign powers distrusted the capacity of the United States to construct or to obtain an adequate navy, even for maintaining the blockade, and heard with incredulity of the building of warships in ninety days from the laying of the keel, and the transformation of commercial craft into effective fighting ships for blockade purposes. Despite the assertions of the Confederate president, the blockade was effective and after the middle of July, 1861, became an ever sterner reality to the South. Whether to declare a blockade or the closing of the Confederate ports was carefully considered by President Lincoln. A proclamation of blockade was, in international law, a quasi recognition of belligerent rights in the Confederacy; but to close port after port by executive authority, though free from the suggestion of any recognition of the Confederacy, would be confusing to foreign powers, would be likely to involve the United States in difficulties with them, and was therefore not adopted as a policy: the Government preferring the consequences of a system of blockade and the operation of international law as to the rights and duties of neutral

nations. The Confederates with all speed utilized the interim between the announcement of the blockade in April and its practical enforcement by mid-July, 1861, to dispose of its cotton and other marketable products, abroad, and also to equip privateers and blockade runners. They transformed a screw steamer, of 500 tons, in the passenger service between New Orleans and Havana, into the Sumter, armed her with five guns, got her through the blockade, late in June, and began capturing and burning American merchantmen, at which she was highly successful for six months, till taking refuge off Gibraltar and there watched by United States warships, the Confederate authorities, concluding that her course was run, disposed of her by sale. The Savannah, another extemporized privateer, of fifty-three tons burden, getting out to sea early in June began giving chase to merchantmen, but mistaking the brig-of-war Perry for one, was by her overhauled, captured and the crew put in confinement and soon after indicted for piracy, but after the disagreement of the jury, remanded to prison, but later exchanged. The effective Confederate navy comprised the scattered warships built in England, as the Alabama, Florida, and others, which speedily won the notoriety of commerce destroyers, and whose depredations were the sufficient cause for the subsequent award, by the Geneva Court of Arbitration, of $15,500,000 to the United States for damages done to American commerce by English-built Confederate cruisers. The South had poor facilities for building warships. The Merrimac must take rank as a most powerful naval weapon, but she was early put out of service. Keels of warships were laid at New Orleans, at Charleston, at Norfolk, and at Richmond, the Tredegar Iron Works near the latter being the chief manufactory of plate iron-but the supply of iron was scarce, the machinery slight and antiquated and the finished plate inferior in quality. Excepting the Merrimac, the projected members of a Confederate fleet were unfinished, due, principally, to the blockade, the early capture of the Confederate ports and the scarcity of material and skilled labor.