Most irksome Pygmy - USS Brooklyn (1858)
Apparently the federal blockade of southern ports is having some effect. From The New-York Times June 13, 1861:
Tantalizing.
The people of Louisiana are particularly enraged about the blockade. That “LINCOLN, SEWARD & CO.’s pigmy squadron” should flout the Star-spangled Banner right at the Balize[?], and almost within sight of the Crescent City, is most intolerable, and not to be endured — if, indeed, they could only help it. The New-Orleans Crescent of the 5th inst. gives vent to its feelings. It is wroth because the “Commander of the Brooklyn has been graciously pleased to allow” but very limited water privilege to the buccaneers of the Gulf; and is grievously mortified at the thought that “one solitary steamer can dictate terms to the Southern Confederacy; but finally consoles its readers with the cheerful thought that “there ought to have been a sufficient force within the Military Department of Louisiana to have blown this Brooklyn out of the water on her first appearance.”
It is no wonder that the Orleanians are mad about it. That a city boasting of a hundred and fifty thousand souls, and a sovereign State inhabited by nearly three-quarters of a million chivalry and chattels, should be shut in, locked up and blockaded in this way, is really disgusting, tantalizing, infuriating, — in short, rather a bad thing, — especially when it is considered that that State lately rushed headlong out of the American Union, and headlong into JEFF. DAVIS’ bogus concern, in order that it might the more perfectly maintain and enjoy its sovereign independence. But still, what can we, the Orleanians do about it? Why, we can howl, scowl, grimace, grin and bear it, till John Bull or John Chinaman, or the King of the Cannibals, or perhaps Honest Old ABE himself, kindly raises the blockade.
CSA Secretary of War, LeRoy Pope Walker
One point, however, is not very clear — why the Confederate Government should make the melancholy confession that it cannot itself relieve its citizens in duress. Has not the Honorable Confederate Secretary of War lately given to the world a semi-official manifesto of the naval forces of the Confederation — with the number of men-of-war, their power, their crew, the weight of metal they carry, and what not? Have we not all heard of the stolen United States revenue cutters Lewis Cass, McClelland, Aiken, Washington and Dodge, and how the first-named carries a 64-pounder gun, and the others 42-pounders, 32-pounders, and so on? Does not everybody know all about the Lady Davis, with her five big guns and crews, 100 men — of the steamers Everglade, Fulton, James Gray, and Star of the West, ([???] Sumter), with them 6-inch columbiads, and other heavy guns -of the Bonita, the James, and the innumerable brigs, barks, and scows which, have been captured by the Gulf pirates, and are now impressed into the Confederate navy?
Did a lot with a little - John Paul Jones (by Charles Wilson Peale, c1781)
Why, we were actually afraid, when we Remembered what PAUL JONES and his boys did with his old tub eighty years ago, and what the Yankee boys did with a few poor ships fifty years ago, that the Confederate fleet would sweep our commerce from the seas, that New-York and Jersey City would be bombarded, and that we should soon see the three-barred bunting floating above the floods of Hell Gate! But alas! we fear that the rhetoric which described the glorious capture of these splendid ships was far grander than the ships themselves, and far more, dreadful than even their columbiads and crews. For, according to the Crescent, the Brooklyn shuts out from the world Louisiana and all its pirates, and dictates terms to the Southern Confederacy. The only hope now is that the gigantic floating battery, which the telegraph this morning announces is to be sent in pursuit of the Brooklyn, may achieve as brilliant a success as the floating battery at Charleston did in the immortal assault upon Fort Sumter. But even that won’t raise the blockade.
Three Stripes over Hell Gate? (Hell Gate, New York c. 1775)
Satellite view of New York's Hell Gate - in red
Satellite view of Hell Gate licensed by Creative Commons
