IF THE CONFEDERATE STATES HAD PURCHASED THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S FLEET
IN 1861
In the preceding chapter I have noted the disastrous consequences of the
rejection of John H. Reagan's plan, urged at Montgomery at the very
foundation of the Confederacy, for the prompt occupation of the south
bank of the Ohio River as the advanced line of defense, and the equally
unfavorable result of the failure of Johnston to press on to the Potomac
after the great success at Manassas. Gettysburg was a pivotal combat,
also; for if Lee had been supported by Stuart's cavalry on that
occasion, there is at least a possibility that the war's tide might have
been turned then and there.
But there was a narrower contingency than either one of these. To a
positively decisive extent, the success of the National forces in
subjugating the Southern States turned on the sea power. The conquest of
the Confederacy was in fact a matter of supreme difficulty as it was;
and if the South had possessed a respectable navy, and had been able to
keep its ports open and steadily exchange its cotton in Europe for the
materials and munitions of war, the conquest would not have been
possible at all.
The chance for the establishment of such a navy lay within the grasp of
the Confederate statesmen, and was by them let slip. Neither they, nor
any one else at the time, realized how easy the thing would have been.
It is first necessary to explain in what situation the National
government was, at the outset of the war, in the matter of a naval
force. Nominally the United States navy consisted of ninety vessels, but
of these fifty were utterly obsolete and unusable except as supply
ships. Of the other forty, twenty were in a state of hopeless
unreadiness. Several of the best ships were in the remotest corners of
the world. The home squadron was composed of twelve ships, of which only
seven were steamers! Nearly fifty years after the invention of steam
navigation, the United States depended principally upon sailing vessels
for its defense. Only three trustworthy warships were left in Northern
waters for the defense of such ports as New York, Boston and
Philadelphia.
As between the North and the South, the chance to wield the sea power
lay with the one of the two rival governments which should first put on
the water even a very small fleet of ironclad, steam-driven vessels. The
Confederacy proved afterward what power could be exerted in this
direction with but one single ironclad, when the _Merrimac_ destroyed or
scattered all the ships in Hampton Roads, for a moment threatened
Washington and the Northern cities with ravage, and was checked at last
only by the almost providential appearance of another ironclad,
Ericsson's little _Monitor_, on the scene. And the _Alabama's_ armor of
chains made her for a time almost a match for the United States navy.
By what means could the Confederacy have forestalled the North in the
provision of a really effective navy? The chance, as I have said, was
offered, and declined, with fatal want of foresight. It lay in the ten
steamships of the English East India Company, which in 1861 was winding
up its affairs. These ships were offered to the Confederacy at a fair
valuation. They were very good vessels, and capable of prompt armoring
in at least as effective a style as that in which the _Alabama_ was
afterwards armored. The East India Company was prepared to make such
terms as the Confederate government could have met.
British outfitters were perfectly willing to trust the Southern
statesmen. The ships could have been armed in a few weeks; there was
nothing to prevent their entrance into Southern ports, for the blockade
was not made effective until one year after the war broke out. The
_Otero_, renamed by the Confederates the _Florida_, had no difficulty in
taking on her men and guns in the Bahamas.
Possessed of ten good steam vessels, commanded by such men as Maury,
Maffitt of the _Florida_, and Semmes of the _Alabama_, the Confederacy
could have quickly overcome its lack of mechanics and workshops by
importation from Europe. It was the command of the Mississippi, the
Cumberland and the Tennessee rivers which "broke the back of the
Confederacy"; and does any one imagine that the wooden ships of
Farragut could have entered the Mississippi, compelled the abandonment
of New Orleans, and secured the possession of not only the seacoast but
the inland river waters which commanded the Confederacy from the rear,
if there had been any good ships to resist him?
The start which these ten ships would have given a Confederate navy
would have more than put the South even with the North on the sea. It
must be remembered that up to 1862, even as it was, the South could do
better in the courts and exchanges of Europe than the Union could. Why?
Because the South had the cotton, upon which the mills of Europe
depended. The continued chance to market cotton would have saved the
situation for the South. _Alabamas_ in any requisite number would have
issued from British shipyards.
As it was, several powerful rams were under construction for the
Confederacy in 1861 and 1862 in the yards of the Lairds. But the
continued insistence of Minister Adams on the unlawfulness of this
proceeding, joined with the fact that the Confederates had no
recognizable navy to back up their purchases, at last compelled the
British government to take these rams over and add them to its own sea
power.
President Jefferson Davis declined the offer of the East India ships for
the apparent reason that the military necessities of the Confederacy
pressed hard upon the financial resources of the new government. Every
member of his government was quite thoroughly convinced that the
National power could not successfully invade the South, provided a
strong army were quickly put into the field. The ready material for good
soldiers was much more abundant in the South than in the North; nearly
all Southern men were horsemen, hunters, marksmen, out-of-door men. On
the other hand, the first levies from the North were mostly city men,
unaccustomed to firearms, strangers to exposure, flabby of physique.
Manassas amply illustrated the great superiority as soldiers of the
first comers from the South over the first comers from the North.
The Confederate leaders counted upon making permanent the advantage
which they were confident of gaining in the field at the outset. To
purchase out of hand ten steamships, from resources that were yet to be
created, and with the manhood of seven States demanding to be armed,
looked, indeed, like madness. And yet this was the very card which, if
played, would have saved the Confederacy's game.
Conceive for a moment the Union navy debarred from entrance into the
James or any of the navigable waters of Virginia, to support military
operations in the direction of Richmond. Conceive Wilmington, N. C.,
which was an easily defensible port, and which really remained open to
the blockade runners for almost two years after the beginning of the
war, rendered a fairly safe point of departure for European trade
throughout the war. Conceive the Mississippi, from Cairo southward to
its mouth, continuously under the power of the Confederacy, with a fleet
of river gunboats backed up by a Gulf squadron. Does any one imagine
that in that case the North could have made either any warlike or
commercial use of the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, or even the
Mississippi from Cairo up to St. Louis?
Freed from the unceasing coast menace and from the danger of being cut
in two along the rivers, the effectiveness of the land forces would have
been more than doubled. Leaving out of the account the possibility of
offensive operations against Washington and the cities of the North,
the defense of the seceded States could have been made so secure that
the people of the North would have called loudly for peace; the border
slave States would have cast in their lot with the Confederacy, and
England and France would have openly sided with the South; secession
would have triumphed definitely before the end of the year 1863.
With the English East India Company, it was a case of "take our ships or
leave them." The South left them, and with them it left its chance for
independence and for putting two mediocre American republics in the
place where one great one, after that decisive moment, was bound to
stand forever.
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Transcriber's note:
Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.