Depends on How You Ask the Question
This is Steven Petrick Posting.
Recently I read an article that sought to prove that the Union blockade of the Confederacy during the American Civil War was a complete waste of effort. The author essentially sought to prove his case by stating that the amount of goods being delivered into the South by Blockade Runners was comparable to what had been delivered before the war.
The statement on its face might be true (I could not off the top of my head tell you if the tonnage of goods received by the South was comparable before it separated from the Union or not). But it is also one of those things that is demonstrably false in that it ignores factors that would not support the premise.
Even if the tonnage was the same, the South was at war, and required MORE tonnage. It is known that the South suffered from a lot of shortages (even the numbers of captured Union rifles and cannons were not enough to keep Southern Armies equipped). There were also shortages of munitions, shoes, etc.
The blockade by its presence eliminated an entire class of bulk cargo movers (while 1838 is regarded as the death knell of "The Age of Sail:, there were still cargo ships that relied on sail even into the 1900s). Most blockade runners were new builds and that expense added to the increasing expense of goods that were actually brought in, part of what triggered the ruinous inflation in the South.
So, while the blockade runners can be viewed with that admiration for courage and daring that has been awarded them (many made very few trips before being caught, although obviously each successful trip was celebrated). But the blockade did in fact strangle the South by increasing the costs of those goods that were brought in and keeping the overall tonnage that was delivered lower than it could have been.
So if you just ask "did the blockade reduce the tonnage of goods that reached the South?", you miss the larger question of "did the blockade affect the war negatively for the south?", and that it most assuredly did. The Blockade runners were not Samaritans running goods to the South out of the kindness of their hearts or a belief in the cause, they were doing it to make a profit, and what they charged for the goods they delivered was based on the dangers of running the blockade.
Recently I read an article that sought to prove that the Union blockade of the Confederacy during the American Civil War was a complete waste of effort. The author essentially sought to prove his case by stating that the amount of goods being delivered into the South by Blockade Runners was comparable to what had been delivered before the war.
The statement on its face might be true (I could not off the top of my head tell you if the tonnage of goods received by the South was comparable before it separated from the Union or not). But it is also one of those things that is demonstrably false in that it ignores factors that would not support the premise.
Even if the tonnage was the same, the South was at war, and required MORE tonnage. It is known that the South suffered from a lot of shortages (even the numbers of captured Union rifles and cannons were not enough to keep Southern Armies equipped). There were also shortages of munitions, shoes, etc.
The blockade by its presence eliminated an entire class of bulk cargo movers (while 1838 is regarded as the death knell of "The Age of Sail:, there were still cargo ships that relied on sail even into the 1900s). Most blockade runners were new builds and that expense added to the increasing expense of goods that were actually brought in, part of what triggered the ruinous inflation in the South.
So, while the blockade runners can be viewed with that admiration for courage and daring that has been awarded them (many made very few trips before being caught, although obviously each successful trip was celebrated). But the blockade did in fact strangle the South by increasing the costs of those goods that were brought in and keeping the overall tonnage that was delivered lower than it could have been.
So if you just ask "did the blockade reduce the tonnage of goods that reached the South?", you miss the larger question of "did the blockade affect the war negatively for the south?", and that it most assuredly did. The Blockade runners were not Samaritans running goods to the South out of the kindness of their hearts or a belief in the cause, they were doing it to make a profit, and what they charged for the goods they delivered was based on the dangers of running the blockade.
posted by Federation Commander at 5:34 PM
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