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invasions across the Potomac that threw the North Atlantic cities into panic; but all these sorties were failures. The first one across the Potomac was turned back at Antietam, September 17, 1862; and the second, the "high-tide of the Confederacy," at Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863.

To close the three thousand miles of sea coast was a more difficult matter. April 19, 1861, Lincoln declared it blockaded;

but this was little more than a statement of intention. Only twelve ships were at the government's command. The rest of the small navy of forty-nine ships had fallen into Southern hands or was scattered far in foreign ports. But blockading squadrons were hurriedly bought, built, and adapted out of coasting steamers and ferryboats; and in a few months the paper blockade became real. From that time to the end, the throttling grip on Southern commerce clung closer and closer.

The export crops, cotton and tobacco, were robbed of value. In 1860 the cotton export amounted to nearly two hundred millions of dollars; in 1862, to four millions. As arms, railway material, clothing, wore out, it was almost impossible to replenish the supply. Before the end of the first year, there was an alarming scarcity of salt, butter, coffee, candles, and

medicines. By recourse to homespun, and by raising corn instead of cotton, part of the need was met. Part was beyond remedy.

Southern sympathizers and venturesome capitalists made it a business to build swift "blockade runners " to carry supplies to Confederate ports from the Bermudas, and to bring out the cotton piled up at Southern wharves and worth fabulous prices in the idle European factories. Fifteen hundred such vessels were captured during the war; and, before the close, they had nearly vanished from the seas. While trips could be made at all, profits were enormous. A ton of salt, costing $7.50 out

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side the Confederacy, could be sold inside in gold for a profit of 20,000 per cent.

For one moment it looked as if the Union fleets would b swept from the seas, and the blockade raised. When the gov ernment troops abandoned Norfolk navy yard (on the secession of Virginia), they left there, only partially destroyed, the frigate Merrimac. The Confederates built on her hull an iron roof

CONFEDERATE BLOCKADE-RUNNER, Teazer, near Charleston harbor,captured soon after this photograph was taken.

ing, and sent her forth as the Virginia against the wooden frigates of the United States in Hampton Roads. This first armored ram on the American coast sank two towering ships (March 8, 1862) and steamed back to her anchorage, confident of completing her mission on the morrow. But, during that night, arrived at the Roads another type of iron vessel, the Monitor, with low, flat deck surmounted by a revolving turret mounting two huge guns, a cheese box on a raft." After a sharp engagement, the Virginia was driven to seek shelter.

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The blockade was saved, and the knell had sounded for wooden men-of-war.1

669. Invasion of the Confederacy had been simplified tremendously by the saving of the Border States to the Union. There were three primary lines of attack. (1) The Army of the Potomac, with headquarters about Washington, must try to

MONITOR AND MERRIMAC. From a painting.

capture Richmond, the political center of the Confederacy, and crush the army of defense - the Army of Northern Virginia. (2) In the West, the Unionists must secure the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, so as to occupy Tennessee and to open roads into Mississippi and Alabama. And (3) the course of the Mississippi had to be secured by the capture of such Confeder

1 Vessels had been covered with iron plates in some of the earlier campaigns on the Mississippi; and England and France had constructed some ironclads; but it was the spectacular battle of "the Monitor and Merrimac" which demonstrated to the world the arrival of a new order - following the victories of the Merrimac on the preceding day.

The Monitor was the invention of a Swedish immigrant, John Ericsson; and she had been just completed, after a hurried three months.

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ate strongholds as New Madrid, Island No. 10, Port Hudson, Memphis, and New Orleans.

Secondary lines of invasion were pointed out by the location of the more important railways-especially those from west to east, such as the Memphis and Charleston Road. To secure these roads, engagements were fought in 1862 at Corinth, Pittsburg Landing, Shiloh, and Memphis.

Vicksburg, the last of the river fortresses to hold out, was forced to surrender to General Grant on July 3, 1863 (the final day of Gettysburg); so that the Father of Waters "once more rolled unvexed

to the sea," cutting off Arkansas, Texas, and most of Louisiana from the main body of the Confederacy. The second task had begun earlier, but lasted longer. Grant had captured Forts Donelson and Henry, commanding the lower courses of the Tennessee rivers, in 1862; but Union occupation of Tennessee, and indeed of the line of the Ohio, was not assured, until, after oscillating campaigns and some of the most bloody fighting of the war, Grant, Thomas,

and Sherman drove the Confederates from Chattanooga, in November of 1863.

This decisive victory opened up a fourth line of invasion, to Atlanta, at the farther end of the Atlanta and Chattanooga