by Philip Leigh
During the first half of the war, Nassau was the leading transshipping site for blockade-running. Between 1861 and 1865, four hundred vessels entered Nassau from the Confederacy, and almost six hundred departed for the Southern states, although two-thirds were officially cleared for other destinations. The war transformed the community like the prince's kiss did Sleeping Beauty. For a few brief years, dollars were spent like pennies, and the previously obscure British colony was converted into a boomtown. But Nassau became less popular in the second half of the war because of yellow-fever outbreaks there and its closer proximity to Union-blockading squadrons as compared to Bermuda, which emerged as the principal blockade-running center in the second half of the war.3
While many of the cargoes destined for the Confederacy originated in Europe, some came from Northern states. One example was anthracite coal from Pennsylvania, which was preferred as a way to minimize the telltale smoke of runners attempting to sneak past the federal blockade. After the fall of Vicksburg, one researcher concluded that most of the meat sustaining Lee's army in 1864 was originally from New York, transshipped via Nassau. Since it sometimes arrived in a spoiled condition, authorities in Richmond facetiously suggested they needed to station a meat inspector in New York.4 On visiting Nassau a year after the war started, the British consul in Charleston wrote the British minister to Lincoln's government, Lord Lyons:
The blockade-runners are doing a great business…. The Richmond government sent about a month ago an order to Nassau for medicine, quinine, etc. It went from Nassau to New York, was executed there, came back to Nassau, thence here, and was on its way to Richmond in 21 days from the date of the order. Nearly all the trade is under the British flag. The vessels are all changed in Nassau and Havana. Passengers come and go freely and no one seems to think there is the slightest risk—which indeed there is not.5
More than one hundred blockade-runners were built in England over the nearly three years from early 1862 to late 1864. They were typically 180 feet long, with a 22-foot beam, and propelled by side-mounted paddlewheels that required less draft than a propeller ship. The ships were painted in dull colors to make them difficult to spot. The typical crew was British, because neutrals were not imprisoned if captured. In a round trip, a skipper could earn $5,000 in gold, whereas the pilot and engineer were paid $2,500 and the average crewman $250.6
Although even farther from important Confederate harbors than Bermuda, Nassau, or Havana, the anchorage at Halifax also gained a blockade-running reputation, for two reasons.
First, a technicality of the transshipment process enabled merchants in the United States to circumvent restrictions against selling products into the Confederacy. Specifically, US-flagged ships could legally enter Canadian ports and unload cargo, thereby converting the freight into Canadian goods. The same ships could then reload the cargoes and take them to Bermuda or Nassau, where they could be sold to buyers who would freight them into the Confederacy on blockade-runners. On the return trip the process would be reversed, with the result that incongruous “Canadian” cotton was legally imported into the United States.
Although proper under US law, the subterfuge was cumbersome. In time many skippers merely used fake papers, which declared that one cargo had been unloaded at Halifax and another loaded. Sometimes such ships never went to Halifax at all, but instead traveled directly from US ports to Bermuda or Nassau with their captains carrying papers falsely representing that the vessels first went to Halifax.7 Secretary of State Seward's son and assistant, Fred, claimed that the Halifax trading firms of B. Weir & Company, G. C. Harvey, Alexander Keith, and S. F. Barss, among others, were “willing agents and abettors of enemies of the United States.”8
A second reason for using Halifax became evident in 1864, when Nassau suffered a yellow fever outbreak. During the war, yellow fever was a deadly disease that led Confederate port authorities to quarantine ships arriving from locations with serious outbreaks. Such quarantines were time consuming and reduced the number of runs an affected ship could make in a fixed time period compared to ships that were not delayed by quarantine.9
Among the items that skipped Canada and went directly from the United States to “neutral” buyers in Nassau or Bermuda, preserved meat was particularly valuable. A favorite was “Bermuda Bacon.” Buyers would simply visit hog farmers in New York and nearby states and offer far more per pound for hams and bacon than the US government or civilian merchants were offering. The large supplies of pork products were salted and shipped out of New York or Philadelphia to Bermuda or Nassau. This was especially true during the first years of the war.
No one seemed to wonder why the people of these islands were suddenly eating vast quantities of pork. Upon arrival in the islands, the hams and bacon were sold at quadruple their cost to agents of the Confederate commissary, then shipped to hungry soldiers on the firing line.10
But provisions and preserved meats were not all that was being shipped from the United States to blockade-running centers. Weapons were sometimes included, as in the case of a shipload of pistols from Boston hidden in barrels of lard.11 Instances were discovered of munitions concealed in trunks taken on board in New York and cannon shipped in boxes labeled “hardware.”12
In 1863, Wilmington merchants told a young Confederate soldier passing through town that some cargoes arrived directly from New York. The judge advocate for the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron wrote, “We have been accustomed to berate…Great Britain for exporting goods to the Confederacy. But probably more goods were carried into the Confederate States by merchants of the United States than all [those] of Europe. The munitions of war were furnished in very large quantities to the enemies of the United States by the citizens of the United States.”13 Direct trade between Northeastern American ports and the Bahamas, Bermuda, and Cuba doubled during the Civil War. Virtually all cargo going into those places from the United States ended up in the Confederacy.14
Shops at Bermuda featured shoes and other articles from Connecticut and Massachusetts labeled “London,” felt hats from New York tagged “Paris,” and “Irish” whisky from New Jersey.15 Major Norman S. Walker, a Confederate agent in Bermuda, regularly bought contraband supplies from New York. Most of it was sent to Wilmington, which was the chief port supplying General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. On June 17, 1863, the American consul at St. George wrote Secretary of State Seward, “I beg to apprise you that large quantities of merchandise are shipped from New York to these islands and here transshipped on board steamers for blockade ports. There is no doubt that Major Walker who styles himself as a Confederate States agent is receiving goods [from] New York by almost every vessel…. A large proportion of the goods shipped from here to Wilmington are from New York.”16
In Chesapeake Bay, vessels cleared from New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore for Washington, DC, would simply stop on the way to discharge cargo in Tidewater Virginia. Other cargoes shipped to Norfolk were transshipped via canals to North Carolina's Albemarle Sound. From there they could be taken up rivers into Virginia to supply Lee's army.17
As Lee was preparing for the invasion of Pennsylvania, Confederate War Department clerk Jones wrote in his famous diary on June 8, 1863, “the arrival and departure of steamers amount to one per day and most of the imported goods are of Yankee manufacture.” Most of the illicit trade originated in New York. Although US customs procedures involving certificates of clearance and monetary bonds were established in an attempt to ensure that contraband cargoes did not end up in the Confederacy, bribery was commonly employed to defraud the paperwork requirements.18
Secretary Chase had granted customs officers the authority to force shippers in the United States carrying freight to Nassau or Bermuda to post a bond equal to the value of the cargo. The bond was to be forfeited if it was discovered that the cargoes were intended for blockade-runners. But the plan fell victim to loopholes and bribery. For some reason, Baltimore and Philadelphia discontinued the bond requirements shortly after N
ew York became more insistent on them. Furthermore, New York shippers often claimed to be British citizens, although they may only have been conduits paid a bribe to fraudulently conceal the true American cargo or ship owner. US-flagged ships changed registry, not only to avoid vulnerability to Confederate commerce raiders such as the CSS Alabama but to sidestep the bond requirements for cargoes carried in American hulls.
One way for shippers to cut through the red tape was to “buy back” the bond from a dishonest customs agent. The Henry B. Stanton family was a good example. Stanton was a noted abolitionist, and his wife, Elizabeth, was a leading feminist. Henry and his son, Neil, secured lucrative sinecures as customs agents. The younger Stanton readily admitted that he would sell bonds back to shippers. In one case he enabled a shipper to avoid liability for a $64,000 bond by selling it back to him for $600. Thus the shipper could send the cargo to a Confederate agent in Nassau or Bermuda without concern that his bond might be forfeited. Secretary Chase launched an investigation of the Stantons in October 1863, and Henry resigned a couple of months later. It was a significant setback that would lead to Chase's downfall the following summer as he battled Seward and Thurlow Weed for the privilege to assign patronage jobs in New York customs, where the majority of duties were collected.19
Perhaps most stunning of all were the Northern shippers who exported merchandise directly into Southern ports. It was easy enough to enter Union-occupied ports such as New Orleans and Beaufort, South Carolina, but some Yankee shippers would run the blockade of Rebel harbors without even attempting to use the middlemen available in Nassau, Bermuda, Havana, or Halifax. Because it was smuggling it was done secretly, so there will never be reliable statistics, but there is evidence that it was substantial. For example, Admiral Farragut was opposed to capturing Mobile until an occupation force could be made available because “the whole of Rebeldom would be supplied through it by our own people.”20
Richmond war clerk Jones's diary provides further evidence that direct trade between ports in the Confederacy and others in the United States was more common than recognized in popular history. In June 1863, he wrote that most of the steamers at Wilmington were “filled with Yankee goods.” In spring 1863, he learned that selected shippers in Mobile were sending cargoes directly to Union-occupied New Orleans. In May 1863, he wrote that many ships leaving Wilmington steered directly for New York once they cleared the harbor.21
In January 1864, his diary records that a trader in Mobile has “authority from the United States…to trade anything but arms and ammunition for cotton.” A March 1864 diary entry notes that a Savannah resident had five steamers available to run the blockade and could “easily make arrangements with the Federal commandant at Fort Pulaski to let them pass and re-pass.” In October of the same year, the diary states that a Confederate agent in Canada reached an agreement with a New York dealer to supply the Confederate government with bacon on terms bartering bacon pound-for-pound for cotton. During January 1865, he wrote that the Confederate Treasury secretary sold cotton to “Yankees” for gold and used the monetary metal to purchase Confederate paper money on the open market in order to improve currency quotations.22
On at least one occasion, a blockade-runner carried authorization directly from President Lincoln. In August 1864, he gave a permit to Texas military governor Andrew Jackson Hamilton, “or any person authorized in writing by him,” to ship cotton through the blockade at either Galveston or Sabine Pass. The bales were to be delivered to a Treasury agent in New Orleans, where they would be sold at auction with 75 percent of the proceeds turned over to Hamilton and his partners. Lincoln's permit advised Major General Canby in charge at New Orleans and Admiral Farragut commanding the applicable blockade squadron that “the passage of [Hamilton's] vessels and cargos shall not be molested or hindered.” Farragut complained to Navy Secretary Welles, who confronted the president. After a time of attempting to deflect responsibility to Secretary of State Seward, Lincoln revoked Hamilton's permit.23
Hamilton's proposition coincided with a surge in Texas blockade-running. Earlier in the war, steamers seldom bothered with the Texas ports because they were too distant from the major markets east of the Mississippi River, and the extra coal required to reach them reduced shipboard cargo space. By summer 1864, the blockade fleets east of the Mississippi were much larger. Consequently, a runner's probability of capture was much greater than earlier. By comparison, the fleets off Texas ports like Galveston and Sabine Pass were mere token blockades. In August and September 1864, three steamers tested the Galveston market after leaving Havana. When all three returned safely to Cuba, their crews reported that Texas Confederates had an abundant supply of low-priced cotton. Furthermore, the Rebels were so hungry for military and other supplies that incoming cargoes could be sold at much higher prices than in harbors east of the Mississippi. Kirby Smith's Cotton Bureau (to be discussed later) purchased most of the imports.24
While few US citizens were convicted of shipping goods into the Confederacy from the North, there is little doubt that the profits were big enough to enable violators to pay bribes in order to evade justice. For example, in June 1863, one government investigator introduced himself to suspected New York blockade-runner John Moore. The investigator represented himself as a Confederate agent seeking a way to send a shipment to Virginia. Moore struck a deal with a local captain named Benedict, who agreed to carry the cargo. Benedict and Moore were arrested but escaped punishment by order of Assistant Secretary of War Thomas Scott.25
Shipments from Chesapeake Bay often reached North Carolina's Albemarle Sound by way of the Dismal Swamp Canal with the connivance of Treasury agents and military officers. Cargoes were shipped from the sound up the Chowan and other rivers into Virginia.26 After the fall of Fort Fisher in January 1865, Lee's army was supplied almost entirely by trade via this route until March 8, 1865, when Lincoln yielded to protests by Grant to put a stop to it by enabling the general to discontinue permits and cancel those already issued east of the Appalachians. It was a matter of some embarrassment to Lincoln, who commented to his bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, “I wonder when General Grant changed his mind on this subject. He was the first man, after the commencement of the war, to grant a permit for the passage of cotton through the lines, and that to his own father.”27
Estimates for the number of blockade-runs completed during the war vary widely, since unreported smugglers were also blockade-runners. Historian Frank Owsley put the figure at eighty-two hundred, including sailing vessels and steamers.28 Author Stephen R. Wise estimated that steamers alone attempted thirteen hundred runs, with nearly an 80 percent success rate.29
Seven
Norfolk
IN LATE SPRING 1862, WHEN MAJOR GENERAL GEORGE B. McClellan launched his campaign to capture Richmond from the southeast by marching up the peninsula between the York and James rivers, the Confederates were forced to abandon Norfolk and nearby areas. After dueling the ironclad USS Monitor to a draw several months earlier, the armored ram CSS Virginia was scuttled. It drew too much water to move to a safe anchorage farther upstream. By the end of June 1862, the federals occupied Norfolk and a surrounding region encompassing a population of about forty thousand.1
McClellan's one-hundred-thousand-man army blocked Norfolk civilians from obtaining supplies from the Confederacy. If the civilians were to survive, it would be necessary for the federal military forces to make allowances for Norfolk-area citizens to trade with others outside the region. Because Norfolk was a blockaded port, the 1856 Paris Declaration of Maritime Law, which was the Lincoln-Seward basis of the federal blockade, required that it be opened for trade from any neutral country once it became a Union-occupied city.
MAJOR GENERAL JOHN DIX
However, sixty-four-year-old Major General John Dix, who was the occupation commander, did not want the blockade lifted. Rather, he desired to be given the authority to grant permits to individual businessmen, empowering them to import and export merchandise in sufficient
quantities to sustain the area's economy. Essentially, he was reaching for monopolistic control over trade into and out of Norfolk.
Dix was a New York businessman and politician with connections to powerful characters who might be described as “robber barons” in the soon-to-arrive Gilded Age. In the final months of the Buchanan administration, Dix was secretary of the Treasury. His appointment was a gesture to a Wall Street community that was losing confidence in the Union during the secession crisis and threatening to discontinue bond purchases needed to finance government operations. The month before Dix's appointment, the federal government was unable to float a $5 million issue, even at a 12 percent interest rate. His predecessor supported the evacuation of Fort Sumter in order to avoid open warfare. New York financiers told Buchanan that they wanted such a man replaced by another who held strong Union credentials and suggested Dix. In 1853, he became president of the Mississippi & Missouri Railroad, which was to become an integral link across Iowa for the first transcontinental railroad. After the war, he was president of the Union Pacific Railroad during its scandalous construction phase. He was an ally of New York political boss Thurlow Weed's, who had earlier promoted legislation for the formation of the New York Central Railroad, which was the largest American corporation of its day.2