ll military anxiety about the
course of events in that quarter.

Meantime the blockade of the Cuban coasts, as indicated above, had
been established effectively, to the extent demanded by international
law, which requires the presence upon the coast, or before the port,
declared blockaded, of such a force as shall constitute a manifest
danger of capture to vessels seeking to enter or to depart. In the
reserved, not to say unfriendly, attitude assumed by many of the
European States, the precise character of which is not fully known,
and perhaps never will be, it was not only right, but practically
necessary, to limit the extent of coast barred to merchant ships to
that which could be thus effectually guarded, leaving to neutral
governments no sound ground for complaint. Blockade is one of the
rights conceded to belligerent States, by universal agreement, which
directly, as well as indirectly, injures neutrals, imposing pecuniary
losses by restraints upon trade previously in their hands. The ravages
of the insurrection and the narrow policy of Spain in seeking to
monopolize intercourse with her colonies had, indeed, already
grievously reduced the commerce of the island; but with our war there
was sure to spring up a vigorous effort, both legal and contraband, to
introduce stores of all kinds, especially the essentials of life, the
supply of which was deficient. Such cargoes, not being clearly
contraband, could be certainly excluded only by blockade; and the
latter, in order fully to serve our military objects, needed at the
least to cover every port In railway communication with Havana, where
the bulk of the Spanish army was assembled. This it was impossible to
effect at the first, because we had not ships enough; and therefore,
as always in such cases, a brisk neutral trade, starting from Jamaica
and from Mexico, as well as from Europe and the North American
Continent, was directed upon the harbors just outside the limits of
the blockade,--towards Sagua la Grande and adjacent waters in the
north, and to Batabano and other ports in the south. Such trade would
be strictly lawful, from an international standpoint, unless declared
by us to be contraband, because aiding to support the army of the
enemy; and such declarations, by which provisions are included in the
elastic, but ill-defined category of contraband, tend always to
provoke the recriminations and unfriendliness of neutral states.
Blockade avoids the necessity for