The Ifs of History Part 8

IF THE CONFEDERATE STATES HAD PURCHASED THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S FLEET IN 1861

In the preceding chapter I have noted the disastrous consequences of the rejection of John H. Reagan's plan, urged at Montgomery at the very foundation of the Confederacy, for the prompt occupation of the south bank of the Ohio River as the advanced line of defense, and the equally unfavorable result of the failure of Johnston to press on to the Potomac after the great success at Mana.s.sas. Gettysburg was a pivotal combat, also; for if Lee had been supported by Stuart's cavalry on that occasion, there is at least a possibility that the war's tide might have been turned then and there.

But there was a narrower contingency than either one of these. To a positively decisive extent, the success of the National forces in subjugating the Southern States turned on the sea power. The conquest of the Confederacy was in fact a matter of supreme difficulty as it was; and if the South had possessed a respectable navy, and had been able to keep its ports open and steadily exchange its cotton in Europe for the materials and munitions of war, the conquest would not have been possible at all.

The chance for the establishment of such a navy lay within the grasp of the Confederate statesmen, and was by them let slip. Neither they, nor any one else at the time, realized how easy the thing would have been.

It is first necessary to explain in what situation the National government was, at the outset of the war, in the matter of a naval force. Nominally the United States navy consisted of ninety vessels, but of these fifty were utterly obsolete and unusable except as supply ships. Of the other forty, twenty were in a state of hopeless unreadiness. Several of the best ships were in the remotest corners of the world. The home squadron was composed of twelve ships, of which only seven were steamers! Nearly fifty years after the invention of steam navigation, the United States depended princ.i.p.ally upon sailing vessels for its defense. Only three trustworthy warships were left in Northern waters for the defense of such ports as New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

As between the North and the South, the chance to wield the sea power lay with the one of the two rival governments which should first put on the water even a very small fleet of ironclad, steam-driven vessels. The Confederacy proved afterward what power could be exerted in this direction with but one single ironclad, when the _Merrimac_ destroyed or scattered all the ships in Hampton Roads, for a moment threatened Washington and the Northern cities with ravage, and was checked at last only by the almost providential appearance of another ironclad, Ericsson's little _Monitor_, on the scene. And the _Alabama's_ armor of chains made her for a time almost a match for the United States navy.

By what means could the Confederacy have forestalled the North in the provision of a really effective navy? The chance, as I have said, was offered, and declined, with fatal want of foresight. It lay in the ten steamships of the English East India Company, which in 1861 was winding up its affairs. These ships were offered to the Confederacy at a fair valuation. They were very good vessels, and capable of prompt armoring in at least as effective a style as that in which the _Alabama_ was afterwards armored. The East India Company was prepared to make such terms as the Confederate government could have met.

British outfitters were perfectly willing to trust the Southern statesmen. The ships could have been armed in a few weeks; there was nothing to prevent their entrance into Southern ports, for the blockade was not made effective until one year after the war broke out. The _Otero_, renamed by the Confederates the _Florida_, had no difficulty in taking on her men and guns in the Bahamas.

Possessed of ten good steam vessels, commanded by such men as Maury, Maffitt of the _Florida_, and Semmes of the _Alabama_, the Confederacy could have quickly overcome its lack of mechanics and workshops by importation from Europe. It was the command of the Mississippi, the c.u.mberland and the Tennessee rivers which "broke the back of the Confederacy"; and does any one imagine that the wooden ships of Farragut could have entered the Mississippi, compelled the abandonment of New Orleans, and secured the possession of not only the seacoast but the inland river waters which commanded the Confederacy from the rear, if there had been any good ships to resist him?

The start which these ten ships would have given a Confederate navy would have more than put the South even with the North on the sea. It must be remembered that up to 1862, even as it was, the South could do better in the courts and exchanges of Europe than the Union could. Why?

Because the South had the cotton, upon which the mills of Europe depended. The continued chance to market cotton would have saved the situation for the South. _Alabamas_ in any requisite number would have issued from British shipyards.

As it was, several powerful rams were under construction for the Confederacy in 1861 and 1862 in the yards of the Lairds. But the continued insistence of Minister Adams on the unlawfulness of this proceeding, joined with the fact that the Confederates had no recognizable navy to back up their purchases, at last compelled the British government to take these rams over and add them to its own sea power.

President Jefferson Davis declined the offer of the East India ships for the apparent reason that the military necessities of the Confederacy pressed hard upon the financial resources of the new government. Every member of his government was quite thoroughly convinced that the National power could not successfully invade the South, provided a strong army were quickly put into the field. The ready material for good soldiers was much more abundant in the South than in the North; nearly all Southern men were hors.e.m.e.n, hunters, marksmen, out-of-door men. On the other hand, the first levies from the North were mostly city men, unaccustomed to firearms, strangers to exposure, flabby of physique.

Mana.s.sas amply ill.u.s.trated the great superiority as soldiers of the first comers from the South over the first comers from the North.

The Confederate leaders counted upon making permanent the advantage which they were confident of gaining in the field at the outset. To purchase out of hand ten steamships, from resources that were yet to be created, and with the manhood of seven States demanding to be armed, looked, indeed, like madness. And yet this was the very card which, if played, would have saved the Confederacy's game.

Conceive for a moment the Union navy debarred from entrance into the James or any of the navigable waters of Virginia, to support military operations in the direction of Richmond. Conceive Wilmington, N. C., which was an easily defensible port, and which really remained open to the blockade runners for almost two years after the beginning of the war, rendered a fairly safe point of departure for European trade throughout the war. Conceive the Mississippi, from Cairo southward to its mouth, continuously under the power of the Confederacy, with a fleet of river gunboats backed up by a Gulf squadron. Does any one imagine that in that case the North could have made either any warlike or commercial use of the Ohio, the c.u.mberland, the Tennessee, or even the Mississippi from Cairo up to St. Louis?

Freed from the unceasing coast menace and from the danger of being cut in two along the rivers, the effectiveness of the land forces would have been more than doubled. Leaving out of the account the possibility of offensive operations against Washington and the cities of the North, the defense of the seceded States could have been made so secure that the people of the North would have called loudly for peace; the border slave States would have cast in their lot with the Confederacy, and England and France would have openly sided with the South; secession would have triumphed definitely before the end of the year 1863.

With the English East India Company, it was a case of "take our ships or leave them." The South left them, and with them it left its chance for independence and for putting two mediocre American republics in the place where one great one, after that decisive moment, was bound to stand forever.