gross civilian interference. The Administration actually refused
to buy the beginnings of a ready-made sea-going fleet when it had
the offer of ten British East Indiamen specially built for rapid
conversion into men-of-war. Forty thousand bales of cotton would
have bought the lot. The Mississippi record was even worse. Five
conflicting authorities divided the undefined and overlapping
responsibilities between them: the Confederate Government, the
State governments, the army, the navy, and the Mississippi
skippers. A typical result may be seen in the fate of the
fourteen "rams" which were absurdly mishandled by fourteen
independent civilian skippers with two civilian commodores. This
"River Defense Fleet" was "backed by the whole Missouri
delegation" at Richmond, and blessed by the Confederate Secretary
of War, Judah P. Benjamin, that very clever lawyer-politician and
eversmiling Jew. Six of the fourteen "rams" were lost, with sheer
futility, at New Orleans in April, '62; the rest at Memphis the
following June.

As a matter of fact the Confederate navy never had but one real
man-of-war, the famous Merrimac; and she was a mere razee, cut
down for a special purpose, and too feebly engined to keep the
sea. Even the equally famous Alabama was only a raider, never
meant for action with a fleet. Over three hundred officers left
the United States Navy for the South; but, as in the case of the
Army, they were followed by very few men. The total personnel of
the regular Confederate navy never exceeded four thousand at any
one time. The irregular forces afloat often did gallant, and
sometimes even skillful, service in little isolated ways. But
when massed together they were always at sixes and sevens; and
they could never do more than make the best of a very bad