[98] the Southerners to hold their own against the ever increasing, well-fed and well-supplied forces of the North. To quote again the able Englishman just mentioned, “Judicious indeed was the policy which, at the very outset of the war, brought the tremendous pressure of the sea power to bear against the South, and had her statesmen possessed the knowledge of what that pressure meant, they must have realized that Abraham Lincoln was no ordinary foe. In forcing the Confederates to become the aggressors, and to fire on the national ensign, he had created a united North; in establishing a blockade of their coasts he brought into play a force which, like the mills of God, ‘grinds slowly, but grinds exceedingly small.’ ” It was the command of the sea which finally told and made certain the success of the army and the reuniting of the States.
[To the discussion presented above by Admiral Chadwick may be added the following expression of opinion by one of the foremost military students of modern Europe: “The cooperation of the United States navy with their army in producing a decisive effect upon the whole character of the military operations is akin to what happens with us in nearly every war in which we engage. An English general has almost always to make his calculations strictly in accordance with what the navy can do for him. The operations by which the Federal navy, in conjunction with the army, split the Confederacy in two and severed the East from the West, must always, therefore, have for him a profound interest and importance. The great strategical results obtained by this concentration of military and naval power, which were as remarkable as the circumstances under which the successes were gained, deserve our closest study.” --Field-Marshal, the Right Honorable Viscount Wolseley.--editors.]
