Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/590

 558 Military importance of the blockade. [i 861-4 Fisher the constant stream of supplies was effectually cut off." Thus did the Northern navy give the most valuable assistance in the final overthrow of the Confederacy. It will have been observed that from first to last the blockade was an agency of the utmost military importance, apart from its economic influence on the South. The want of good boots, which could not be made in the South, affected the marching power of the Southern troops. General Johnston, commanding the western army, reported in January, 1864, that two out of four brigades in his force could not march for want of shoes, while blankets were also not to be obtained. The miserable condition to which the Southern troops were thus reduced led to a large amount of straggling, which weakened them in every battle. This has usually been ascribed to defective discipline ; but obviously it is impossible for any commander to punish severely barefooted and half naked men for inability to keep up with their better equipped comrades. Soldiers who, in the words of an eye-witness, " were crazed with hunger," must either straggle or die. Second only to the blockade, in political and strategical importance, was the clearing of the Mississippi from Cairo to the sea, though in this undertaking, unlike the blockade, the services of the army were as efficacious as those of the navy. Both sides began the building of war- ships on the Mississippi in 1861, the Northern vessels being of the gun- boat type, lightly armoured. In September of that year the Northern flotilla got to work, supporting the army and skirmishing with the Confederate "bushwhackers" or guerrillas. Throughout the early months of 1862 the flotilla rendered invaluable service to Grant. It co-operated in the attack upon Fort Henry on the Tennessee river, where the Northern gun-boats were severely handled. Immediately after the fall of the fort, three of the gun-boats pushed on up the river to the Alabama frontier, destroyed the Memphis and Ohio railway bridge, and burned a great quantity of Confederate stores, at the same time threatening the important line of railroad which linked Charleston to Memphis. In the attack on Fort Donelson, which commanded the upper Cumberland, the gun-boats were directed by Grant to run past the fort and take it in reverse, at the same time cutting it off from the Confederate forces. This work they accomplished, though they suffered severely from the guns of the fort ; and their presence on the river above the fort was the strategical cause of the sally of the garrison, which resulted in Grant's first complete victory. That general had worked admirably with the navy ; and it was one of his many merits that he understood the power which the possession of this superior flotilla con- ferred upon him. He was for moving at once up the Tennessee south- westward to Corinth, where the railroad system centred; but he was overruled by an incapable superior, though such action would have had a decisive effect. As the result of his victory at Donelson a victory