to be measured in money. The real loss was the loss of a million
men, on both sides put together, for these men who died were of
the nation's best.


CHAPTER III. THE NAVAL WAR: 1862

Bull Run had riveted attention on the land between the opposing
capitals and on the armies fighting there. Very few people were
thinking of the navies and the sea. And yet it was at sea, and
not on land, that the Union had a force against which the
Confederates could never prevail, a force which gradually cut
them off from the whole world's base of war supplies, a force
which enabled the Union armies to get and keep the strangle-hold
which did the South to death.

The blockade declared in April was no empty threat. The sails of
Federal frigates, still more the sinister black hulls of the new
steam men-of-war, meant that the South was fast becoming a land
besieged, with every outwork accessible by water exposed to
sudden attack and almost certain capture by any good amphibious
force of soldiers and sailors combined.

Sea-power kept the North in affluence while it starved the South.
Sea-power held Maryland in its relentless grip and did more than
land-power to keep her in the Union. Sea-power was the chief
factor in saving Washington. Seapower enabled the North to hold
such points of vantage as Fortress Monroe right on the flank of
the South. And sea-power likewise enabled the North to take or
retake other points of similar importance: for instance, Hatteras