properly so
called--the entrance, that is, of blockaded Confederate harbors--was a
small matter compared with the flourishing contraband trade carried on
through the Mexican port Matamoras and across the Rio Grande. When
Farragut's lieutenant, Commodore Henry H. Bell, visited this remote and
ordinarily deserted spot in May, 1863, he counted sixty-eight sails at
anchor in the offing and a forest of smaller craft inside the river,
some of which were occupied in loading and unloading the outside
shipping; to such proportions had grown the trade of a town which
neither possessed a harbor nor a back country capable of sustaining such
a traffic. Under proper precautions by the parties engaged, this, though
clearly hostile, was difficult to touch; but it also became of
comparatively little importance when the Mississippi fell.

Not so with Mobile. As port after port was taken, as the lines of the
general blockade drew closer and closer, the needs of the Confederacy
for the approaching death-struggle grew more and more crying, and the
practicable harbors still in their hands became proportionately valuable
and the scenes of increasing activity. After the fall of New Orleans and
the evacuation of Pensacola, in the spring of 1862, Mobile was by far
the best port on the Gulf coast left to the Confederates. Though
admitting a less draught of water than the neighboring harbor of
Pensacola, it enjoyed the advantage over it of excellent water
communications with the interior; two large rivers with extensive
tributary systems emptying into its bay. Thanks to this circumstance, it
had become a place of very considerable trade, ranking next to New
Orleans in the Gulf; and its growing commerce, in turn, reacted upon the
communications by promoting the development of its railroad system. The
region of which Mobile was the natural port did not depend for its
importance only upon agricultural products; under somewhat favorable
conditions it had developed some manufacturing interests in which the
Southern States were generally very deficient, and which afterward found
active employment in the construction of the Tennessee, the most
formidable ironclad vessel built by the Confederates.

For all these reasons the tenure of Mobile became a matter of serious
consequence to the enemy; and, as Farragut had from the first foreseen,
they made active use of the respite afforded them by the unfortunate
obstinacy of the Navy Department in refusing him