submarines and torpedo-boats might compel blockading ships to keep
at such distance from ports that many loopholes of escape would be
open to blockade runners, yet it may be pointed out that even a
partial blockade, even a blockade that made it risky for vessels
to try to break it, would have a very deleterious effect upon the
prosperity of the country and of every man, woman, and child within
it. A blockade like this was that maintained during the greater
part of the Civil War by the Northern States against the Southern
States. This blockade, while not perfect, while it was such as to
permit many vessels to pass both ways, was nevertheless so effective
that it made it impossible for the Southern States to be prosperous,
or to have any reasonable hope of ever being prosperous. And while
it would be an exaggeration to state that the navy itself, unaided
by the army, could have brought the South to terms; while it would
be an exaggeration to state that all the land battles fought in the
Civil War were unnecessary, that all the bloodshed and all the ruin
of harvests and of homesteads were unnecessary, nevertheless it does
seem that so long as the navy maintained the blockade which it did
maintain, the people of the South would have been prevented from
achieving enough prosperity to carry on an independent government;
so that their revolt would have failed. The South, not being able
to raise the blockade by means of their navy, might have tried to
do so by sending an army into the Northern States, to whip the
Northerners on their own ground; but this would clearly have been
impossible.

The sentences above are not written with the intention of minimizing
the services rendered by the army in the Civil War, or of detracting
from the glory of the gallant officers and men who composed it, or
of subtracting one jot or tittle from a grateful appreciation of