Cruiser Warfare, Blockade and the Civil War
The blockade, especially, was more effective than you think, but not for the reasons you think...
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Cruiser warfare coupled with blockade was not simply war against commerce. Warships and armed civilian vessels cruised an enemy coast or known trade route, or loitered around choke points hoping to find lightly armed merchant ships belonging to either the enemy or to their friend. The mission of the cruiser was to capture or destroy cargo ships and thus harm the enemy’s cause by starving him of resources, be the resources weapons, food or other necessaries. Using food as a weapon (chiefly by denying it) is thus as old as the seagoing trade itself.
Cruisers were the dread of states large and small.
Uncontrolled cruisers—either pirates or privateers—were the bane of “civilized” warfare. While sailing merchantmen often carried cannons before there were steamships, merchant sailors manned them to warn off most lightly armed pirates, but couldn't hope to fight off any ship of any regular navy or privateers that were often as well armed as warships.
Enter the Declaration of Paris
In 1856, the major states of the world collaborated on the Declaration of Paris, to outlaw the Letters of Marque and Reprisal that empowered privateers. This re-militarized commerce raiding, so once again navies were supposed to go back to doing this tedious and nasty work of commerce raiding themselves that privateers had been doing for centuries. The Declaration also defined what a blockade was, created definitions for neutral rights, contraband, and continuous voyages (important for deciding which cargoes came from where and were going where).
Technology changed the value of the targets.
Commerce raiding might have been effective under the Declaration, but they limited the strategic success of the Confederate cruisers because much had changed. While the Confederate raiders destroyed the Northern whaling fleet in the Pacific, with the expansion of petroleum refining, the whalers were becoming obsolete; their loss was regrettable but not unsustainable to the Northern economy.
The Laws of Unintended Consequences.
The Confederate raiders also decimated the North’s merchant fleet by getting many cargo vessels sold to owners in other countries. These vessels didn't stop sailing in and out of Northern ports, they merely changed flags. Goods sailed to and from Northern ports under other flags unstintingly, and the Confederates could do nothing to stop them: cargoes didn't care what flag they sailed under. Because of the Civil War experience, the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 put in place the cruiser rules that were in effect at the beginning of WWI in 1914 that made the submarine nearly impotent as a weapon of war…if they followed them. The Germans mitigated this impotence by declaring unrestricted submarine warfare that would eventually bring the United States into the war against Germany.
The American Civil War was the first test of the Declaration's rules for both blockaders and cruisers.
Blockade of the Union under the Declaration was beyond the South’s technological means and, very early, barely within the North’s. Even if Richmond had declared a blockade of the North as the North did of the South, the South could never have erected a "credible" blockade under the rules of the Declaration of Paris, like the North could, which was a crucial requirement for legally intercepting neutral vessels. When USS San Jacinto stopped RMS Trent in November 1861, it was lawful under both the Declaration of Paris and traditional cruiser rules, but removing the Confederate representatives was an uncomfortable gray area.
Blockade under the new rules was brutally effective.
Once Lincoln declared the Southern states to be under blockade, the profit for running anything the South wanted but could not produce increased. This was not because of stopping and searching neutral ships, but because the Confederacy only had agricultural products to sell, and Europe did not have as much need for them as the South needed to sell them. Close blockade of the Confederacy’s ports was effective enough to drive the cost of flour up over 1400% in Virginia between 1861 and 1863 not because of the material, but the machinery to make it, which broke down with age and use. The Union’s blockade made Confederate efforts to export cotton, rice, tobacco and other agricultural products to Europe for cash increasingly difficult. Incoming blockade runners usually carried luxury goods paid for in gold and silver. Confederate scrip, which no one wanted, usually paid for hard goods like weapons, ammunition, and machinery. Even after the Confederacy required percentages of military goods in every runner, runners honored these decrees in their breach more than in their observance, since the profit margins were so high, the inspectors easily bribed, and the practical penalties non-existent.
The Union's blockade didn’t need to choke off all trade from all ports.
All that was needed to do the most damage was to blockade those ports serviced by rail—a distinction that narrowed the problem down considerably. While the Union watched and often blockaded other ports, the Confederacy often claimed that the blockade was legally ineffective. The Confederate ironclad rams CSS Palmetto State and CSS Chicora sank several Union blockaders and forced the rest out of range at Charleston in January 1863. As a result, the Confederacy declared the blockade lifted and insisted that, under the Declaration of Paris, Charleston was open for thirty days. The Union paid no attention, and neither did the international community. The “law” had no effective teeth with no one to enforce it.
And there was sovereignty…
The idea of the nation, as opposed to the kingdom it was displacing, was ill-defined in the 19th Century (and is not much better now), but one identifying trait has always been the ability to trade goods with other states in a free exchange. While this trait ties nation to trade, it also ties trade to diplomacy and international recognition. While the debates about other characteristics of nation still rage, trade and recognition by other states are still key components of defining a sovereign state.
If the Confederacy could not trade, was it a state?
While the Union’s blockade was tacit recognition of Confederate sovereignty, Lincoln tied it to his declaration of rebellion, naming states, not a confederacy. While Europe recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent, angering the Union, it went no further. As British Foreign Secretary John Russell said, “The question of belligerent rights is one, not of principle, but of fact.” OK, the South was at war. That was as far as anyone would go to recognize them.
The effectiveness issue.
Although international law stated that a blockade must be physically effective to be legally binding on neutral powers, the definition was ambiguous and, as we can see from the Charleston example, pointless without enforcement. By officially respecting the Union blockade, Europe maintained a consistent position on belligerent rights and, in its way, denied the sovereignty of the Confederacy. Even as porous as it certainly was, the blockade denied the Southern Confederacy status as a sovereign state while it slowly starved it of both capital and arms.
The Devil’s Own Day: Shiloh and the American Civil War
Early in the war, far beyond the contested and blockaded coasts, a bloody brawl in the Tennessee wilderness set the tone for the conflict in the West while expending a quarter of the Confederacy’s powder in just two days.
Ulysses Grant and AS Johnston met only once, near a flatboat landing on the Tennessee River. Only one survived. Available from your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph.
Coming Up…
Shiloh Reconsidered
Recognizing "Palestine"
And Finally...
On 1 March:
1781: The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union take effect in the United States. After Maryland finally ratified the Articles that February, the Second Continental Congress declared them to be in effect on 1 March. Still fighting the British, the Articles didn’t change how the states did business, but it changed the nature of the conflict somewhat.
1917: President Woodrow Wilson makes the Zimmerman Telegram public. Intercepted by both British intelligence and American telegraphers, the note originated as a coded telegram to the Mexican government. The message suggested that in the event of war between the US and Germany, Mexico could join Germany and recover some of the land she’d “lost” in the war of 1846-48. The telegram alarmed the Americans and is attributed to the rising war fever that culminated in the 6 April declaration of war.
And today is NATIONAL PEANUT BUTTER LOVER’S DAY. Now, you can count me in on this one, since it’s close to my last self-indulgence. In whatever form you choose, I’ll take mine slathered on an English muffin and sprinkled with brown sugar-cinnamon, my other self-indulgence.