of war this has
always possessed value, and better use of it perhaps never was made
than by the American people at this time; but it is not determinative
of great issues, and the achievements of the public and private armed
vessels of the United States, energetic and successful as they were at
this period, constituted no exception to the universal experience.
Control of the highways of the ocean by great fleets destroys an
enemy's commerce, root and branch. The depredations of scattered
cruisers may inflict immense vexation, and even embarrassment; but
they neither kill nor mortally wound, they merely harass. Co-operating
with other influences, they may induce yielding in a maritime enemy;
but singly they never have done so, and probably never can. In 1814 no
commerce was left to the United States; and that conditions remained
somewhat better during 1813 was due to collusion of the enemy, not to
national power.

The needs of the British armies in the Spanish Peninsula and in
Canada, and the exigencies of the West India colonies, induced the
enemy to wink at, and even to uphold, a considerable clandestine
export trade from the United States. Combined with this was the hope
of embarrassing the general government by the disaffection of New
England, and of possibly detaching that section of the country from
the Union. For these reasons, the eastern coast was not included in
the commercial blockade in 1813. But no motive existed for permitting
the egress of armed vessels, or the continuance of the coasting trade,
by which always, now as then, much of the intercourse between
different parts of the country must be maintained, and upon which in
1812 it depended almost altogether. With the approach of spring in
1813, therefore, not only was the commercial blockade extended to
embrace New York and all south of it, together with the Mississippi
River, but the naval constriction upon the shore line became so severe
as practically to annihilate the coasting trade, considered as a means
of commercial exchange. It is not possible for deep-sea cruisers
wholly to suppress the movement of small vessels, skirting the beaches
from headland to headland; but their operations can be so much
embarrassed as to reduce their usefulness to a bare alleviation of
social necessities, inadequate to any scale of interchange deserving
the name of commerce.

"I doubt not," wrote Captain Broke, when challenging Lawrence to a
ship duel, "that you will f