THE UNION AND CONFEDERATE NAVIES.

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the first or Hartford class, 4 large side-wheelers, and 8 sloops of the second orIroquois class. All these were exceedingly valuable as the nucleus of a fleet, butfor the war which the Government had now on hand they could be consideredas nothing more than this. According to the position which the Adminis-tration was very soon compelled to take, the struggle was one a, outrance. In aforeign war the conflict usually springs from a collision of rights or of inter-ests, involving only a particular branch of the relations of the two contestants,and the question is ultimately settled by some form of compromise, as soonas financial or military exhaustion leads one party or the other to conclude thata protraction of the contest is not worth its while. In the civil war, however,no compromise was possible, and with the resolution shown by the Southernpeople, nothing short of complete subjugation would insure the restorationof the Union. In such a war, a little fleet capable of raids upon theenemy’s commerce or sea-ports might be advantageous to the insurgents, butthe Federal Government required materials and methods of a totally differentcharacter. No mere raids would profit it a jot. It must blockade the insur-gent territory; and to do this it was not enough to keep a few ships cruisingin neighboring waters, but a cordon of fast and efficient steamers must bestretched from end to end, without so much as a gap in the whole fourthousand miles of coast. The reduction or even the passage of fortificationsrequired powerful and well-equipped fleets engaged solely in these enter-prises. The vast net-work of interior waterways in which the army’s baseand communications must be protected, could only be occupied successfullyby another and equally numerous fleet. Finally, the protection of commercedemanded, from the very nature of things, far more vessels than its destruction.

Had the material of the navy of 1861 been such as it ought to have been,—composed, let us say, of ninety modern war-steamers of fair quality; withsuch an organization that those laid up in ordinary could have been fittedout in two weeks at farthest, as should always be the case; with a reserve ofa hundred, or even of fifty merchant-steamers, constructed with a view toconversion into war-vessels at short notice, which is an easy matter to accom-plish; with some system by which the latest problems in naval science,especially in reference to iron-clads, had been considered and, in part at least,carried to solution; and finally, with a corps of officers graded more or lessby merit, or the promise of growing fitness for command, instead of by age,or the promise of growing unfitness,— had all these plain, practicable, andsensible measures found a place in the naval administration, it is perfectlysafe to say that a single year would have seen the opening of the Mississippi , theoccupation of North Carolina, the fall of Richmond, Charleston, Savannah ,and Mobile, and probably the end of the Confederacy. During the first sixmonths of the war, there was really nothing to oppose the vigorous attack ofsuch a force, and there was little more during the six months following.

As the naval material was not on a respectable peace-footing, and as noprovision had been made for its conversion to a war-footing, the measuresadopted for its increase were chiefly makeshifts to which the Governmentwas driven by the exigencies of the moment. The vessels purchased by the