emy ports, and the patrolling of
an enemy coastline three thousand miles long, but also the patrolling
of those oversea ports from which most contraband came. This oversea
patrol was the most effective, because it went straight to the
source of trouble. But it required extraordinary vigilance, because
it had to be conducted from beyond the three-mile limit, and with
the greatest care for all the rights of neutrals.

By mid-November Farragut was back at New Orleans. A month later
General Banks arrived with reinforcements. He superseded General
Butler and was under orders to cooeperate with McClernand, Grant's
second-in-command, who was to come down the Mississippi from Cairo.
But the proposed meeting of the two armies never took place. Banks
remained south of Port Hudson, McClernand far north of Vicksburg;
for, as we shall see in the next chapter, Sherman's attempt to take
Vicksburg from the North failed on the twenty-ninth of December.

The naval and river campaigns of '62 thus ended in disappointment
for the Union. And, on New Year's Day, Galveston, which Farragut had
occupied in October without a fight and which was lightly garrisoned
by three hundred soldiers, fell into Confederate hands under most
exasperating circumstances. After the captain and first lieutenant
of the U.S.S. _Harriet Lane_ had been shot by the riflemen aboard two
cotton-clad steamers the next officer tamely surrendered. Commander
Renshaw, who was in charge of the blockade, amply redeemed the honor
of the Navy by refusing to surrender the _Westfield_, in spite
of the odds against him, and by blowing her up instead. But when
he died at the post of duty the remaining Union vessels escaped;
and the blockade was raised for a week.

After that Commodore H. H. Bell, one of Farragut's best men, closed
in with a grip which never let go. Yet even Bell suffered a reverse
when he sent the U.S.S. _Hatteras_ to overhaul a strange vessel that
lured her off some fifteen miles and sank her in a thirteen-minute
fight. This stranger was the _Alabama_, then just beginning her famous
or notorious career. Nor were these the only Union troubles in the
Gulf during the first three weeks of the new year. Commander J.
N. Matt ran the _Florida_ out of Mobile, right through the squadron
that had been specially strengthened to deal with her; and the
shore defenses of the Sabine Pass, like those of Galveston, fell
into Confederate hands again, to remain there till the war wa