BULL RUN had riveted attention on the land be-
tween the opposing capitals and on the armies
fighting there. Very few people were thinking of
the navies and the sea. And yet it was at sea, and
not on land, that the Union had a force against
which the Confederates could never prevail, a force
which gradually cut them off from the whole world's
base of war supplies, a force which enabled the
Union armies to get and keep the strangle-hold
which did the South to death.

The blockade declared in April was no empty
threat. The sails of Federal frigates, still more the
sinister black hulls of the new steam men-of-war,
meant that the South was fast becoming a land
besieged, with every outwork accessible by water
exposed to sudden attack and almost certain cap-
ture by any good amphibious force of soldiers and
sailors combined.

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