River, down to the Mississippi (between the Confederate
strongholds of Vicksburg and Port Hudson) and on to any other part
of the South. But what may be called the high-seas blockade was no
less harassing, complicated as it was by the work of Confederate
raiders.

The coast blockade of '63 was marked by two notable ship duels and
three fights round Charleston, then, as always, a great storm center
of the war. At the end of January two Confederate gunboats under
Commodore Ingraham attacked the blockading flotilla of Charleston,
forced the _Mercedita_ to surrender, badly mauled the _Keystone
State_, and damaged the _Quaker City_. But, though some foreign
consuls and all Charleston thought the blockade had been raised
for the time being, it was only bent, not broken.

At the end of February the Union monitor _Montauk_ destroyed the
Confederate privateer _Nashville_ near Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee
River in Georgia. In April nine Union monitors steamed in to test the
strength of Charleston; but, as they got back more than they could
give, Admiral Du Pont wisely decided not to try the fight-to-a-finish
he had meant to make next morning. Wassaw Sound in Georgia was
the scene of a desperate duel on the seventeenth of June, when
the Union monitor _Weehawken_ captured the old blockade-runner
_Fingal_, which had been converted into the new Confederate ram
_Atlanta_. The third week in August witnessed another bombardment
of Charleston, this time on a larger scale, for a longer time,
and by military as well as naval means. But Charleston remained
defiant and unconquered both this year and the next.

Confederate raiders were at work along the trade routes of the
world in '63, doing much harm by capture and destruction, and even
more by shaking the security of the American mercantile marine.
American crews were hard to get when so many hands were wanted
for other war work; and American vessels were increasingly apt to
seek the safety of a neutral flag.

Slowly, and with much perverse interference to overcome in the
course of its harassing duties, the Union navy was getting the
strangle-hold that killed the sea-girt South. By '64 the North had
secured this strangle-hold; and nothing but foreign intervention
or the political death of the Northern War Party could possibly
shake it off. The South was feeling its practical enislement as
never before. The strong right arm of the Union navy held it fast
at every point but three--