He had been called to direct the government of a proud, sensitive,
jealous people thrown without preparation into a position which
threatened their existence, without an army, without arms, or the means
to manufacture them, without even powder, or the means to make it, or
the material out of which it must be made, without a navy or a single
ship-yard in which to build one, and three thousand miles of coast to be
defended against a navy which had whipped the greatest maritime nation
of the world. His genius must meet every difficulty and supply every
want or his Confederacy would fall at the first shock of war.
The one tremendous and apparently insuperable difficulty in case of war
was the lack of a navy. A navy could not be built in a day, or a year or
two years, were the resources of the Confederacy boundless. The ships of
war now in the possession of the United States were of incalculable
power in such a crisis. The South was cut in every quarter by navigable
rivers. Many of their waters opened on Northern interiors accessible to
great workshops from which new gunboats could be built with rapidity and
launched against the South. The Mississippi River, navigable for a
thousand miles, flowed through the entire breadth of the Confederacy
with its approaches and its mouth in the hands of the North.
Pages:
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183