Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[547] war, and was by Yankee hyperbole exalted above the deeds of Nelson at Trafalgar and the Nile. He who had by the most indifferent prowess — for the enemy's superiority on the water had always been a foregone conclusion-come to be the naval hero of the war, was immortalized after the modern New York fashion of big dinners and newspaper lyrics. A “poet” was employed to recite to him in public what the New York journals called “a masterly ballad,” each stanza of which closed with the word “Farragut.” A feast was prepared for him, where a plaster of ice-cream represented the American Eagle, and miniature ships, built of sticks of candy, loaded the table. The sober mind will turn from these coarse displays of New York enthusiasm, ridiculous to childishness, to look at facts. The naval fight in Mobile Bay was a match between eighteen Federal vessels, having two hundred and twelve guns, and four Confederate vessels, having twenty-two guns. The commentary of history will be taken from the words written at the time in the columns of the Richmond Examiner: “It was a most unequal contest in which our gallant little navy was engaged, and we lost the battle; but our ensign went down in a blaze of glory.”

We pass to other events of the naval service of 1864, to find a record of Federal success, coupled with peculiar circumstances of dishonour.

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Sinking of the Confederate privateer Alabama.

The privateering service of the Confederate States had not accomplished all that the public had expected from it; and yet the sum of its results was formidable, and amounted to a considerable weight in the war. From the time the pilot-boat Savannah and the little schooner Jeff. Davis sallied out in the first year of the war, terrour had been struck into the entire commercial marine of the enemy. The Sumter, carrying nine guns, under command of Capt. Raphael Semmes, was the first really formidable experiment of a Confederate privateer. After capturing a number of prizes, she was abandoned at Gibraltar, in January, 1862, as unseaworthy. Since then the two most famous Confederate privateers were the Alabama and the Florida, which scoured the seas from the East Indies to the Atlantic coast, inflicting on the Federal commerce and tonnage the most disastrous results.

A report was made to the Federal Congress of captures by Confederate cruisers up to the 30th of January, 1864. The list, which was not complete, footed up 193, with a tonnage of 89,704. At fifty dollars a ton, the vessels were valued at $4,485,200; the cargoes, at one hundred dollars a ton, were estimated at $8,970,400; total value, $13,455,500. Sixty-two were captured by the Alabama; twenty-six by the Sumter, and twenty two by the Florida.