domestic as well as foreign. The southern waters
abounded indeed in internal coastwise communications; not consecutive
throughout, but continuous for long reaches along the shores of North
and South Carolina and Georgia. These, however, were narrow, and not
easily approached. Behind the sea islands, which inclose this
navigation, small craft can make their voyages sheltered from the
perils of the sea, and protected in great measure from attack other
than by boats or very light cruisers; to which, moreover, some local
knowledge was necessary, for crossing the bars, or threading the
channels connecting sound with sound. Into these inside basins empty
numerous navigable rivers, which promoted intercourse, and also
furnished lines of retreat from danger coming from the sea. Coupled
with these conditions was the fact that the United States had in these
quarters no naval establishment, and no naval vessels of force.
Defence was intrusted wholly to gunboats, with three or four armed
schooners of somewhat larger tonnage. American offensive operation,
confined here as elsewhere to commerce destroying, depended entirely
on privateers. Into these ports, where there were no public facilities
for repair, not even a national sloop of war entered until 1814 was
well advanced.

Prior to the war, one third of the domestic export of the United
States had issued from this southern section; and in the harassed year
1813 this ratio increased. The aggregate for the whole country was
reduced by one half from that of 1811, and amounted to little more
than one fourth of the prosperous times preceding Jefferson's embargo
of 1808, with its vexatious progeny of restrictive measures; but the
proportion of the South increased. The same was observable in the
Middle states, containing the great centres of New York, Philadelphia,
and Baltimore. There a ratio to the total, of a little under fifty per
cent, rose to something above that figure. The relative diminution,
corresponding to the increases just noted, fell upon New England, and
is interesting because of what it indicates. Before the war the export
of domestic produce from the eastern ports was twenty per cent of the
national total; in 1813 it fell to ten per cent. When the domestic
export is taken in conjunction with the re-exportation of foreign
products, the loss of New England is still more striking. From
twenty-five per cent of the whole national export, domestic and
foreign, she now fell t