invasion to be opened up as well.

Of course the South had some sea-power of her own. Nine-tenths of
the United States Navy stood by the Union. But, with the
remaining tenth and some foreign help, the South managed to
contrive the makeshift parts of what might have become a navy if
the North had only let it grow. The North, however, did not let
it grow.

The regular navy of the United States, though very small to start
with, was always strong enough to keep the command of the sea and
to prevent the makeshift Southern parts of a navy from ever
becoming a whole. Privateers took out letters of marque to prey
on Northern shipping. But privateering soon withered off, because
prizes could not be run through the blockade in sufficient
numbers to make it pay; and no prize would be recognized except
in a Southern port. Raiders did better and for a much longer
time. The Shenandoah was burning Northern whalers in Bering Sea
at the end of the war. The Sumter and the Florida cut a wide
swath under instructions which "left much to discretion and more
to the torch." The famous Alabama only succumbed to the U.S.S.
Kearsarge after sinking the Hatteras man-of-war and raiding
seventy other vessels. Yet still the South, in spite of her
ironclads, raiders, and rams, in spite of her river craft, of the
home ships or foreigners that ran the blockade, and of all her
other efforts, was a landsman's country that could make no real
headway against the native seapower of the North.

Perhaps the worst of all the disabilities under which the
abortive Southern navy suffered was lubberly administration and