was carried may be inferred from the fact that during the
war the American fleet captured or sunk more than seven hundred
vessels bound from British ports to ports of the Confederacy. How
many vessels escaped our navy and safely ran the blockade may never
be known, but for three years it was a steady contest between the
navy of the United States and the blockade-runners of England.
The persistent course of the latter was stimulated both by cupidity
and by ill will to this country. They were anxious to make pecuniary
gains for themselves and to aid the Confederacy at the same time.
They were checked only by the extra-hazardous character imparted
to the trade by the alertness and superior vigilance of our cruisers
which sent many millions of English ventures to less profitable
markets and many millions to the adjudication of our own Prize-
courts.

The establishment and maintenance of a blockade is not accounted
by naval officers as the most brilliant service to which in the
line of their profession they may be deputed, but it was a service
of inestimable value to the cause of the Union, and it was performed
with a skill and thoroughness never surpassed. The blockade required
an enormous force of men. In addition to the marines, to the large
body of soldiers transferred from time to time to the navy, and to
the rebel prisoners that joined in the service, there were 121,807
men specially enlisted in the navy during the war. But for the
aid thus rendered by the navy, the hard fight would have been longer
and more sanguinary. Had not the South been thus deprived of the
munitions of war, of clothing and of all manner of supplies which
England and France were eager to furnish her, we should not have
seen the end of the civil war in 1865, and we should have been
subjected to all the hazards implied by the indefinite continuance
of the struggle.

The census of 1860 shows that the thirty-three States and seven
Territories, which at that time composed the United States, contained
a population of 31,443,791. Fifteen of these States with 12,140,296
inhabitants were slave-holding, more than four millions of the
population being slaves; eighteen with an aggregate population of
19,303,494 were classed as free. Four of the fifteen slave States,
Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky, whose people numbered
three and one-half millions, constituted what were known as the
Border slave States--West Virginia being added to th