ither offers, or can be contrived." In short, you must
command either a bridge or a ford, and have a disposable force ready
to utilize it by attack. The fact of such preparation fetters every
movement of the enemy.

At its very outbreak the War of 1812 gave an illustration of the
working of this principle. Tiny as was the United States Navy, the
opening of hostilities found it concentrated in a body of several
frigates, with one or two sloops of war, which put to sea together.
The energies of Great Britain being then concentrated upon the navy of
Napoleon, her available force at Halifax and Bermuda was small, and
the frigates, of which it was almost wholly composed, were compelled
to keep together; for, if they attempted to scatter, in order to watch
several commercial ports, they were exposed to capture singly by this
relatively numerous body of American cruisers. The narrow escape of
the frigate "Constitution" from the British squadron at this moment,
on her way from the Chesapeake to New York, which port she was unable
to gain, exemplifies precisely the risk of dispersion that the British
frigates did not dare to face while their enemy was believed to be at
hand in concentrated force. They being compelled thus to remain
together, the ports were left open; and the American merchant ships,
of which a great number were then abroad, returned with comparative
impunity, though certainly not entirely without losses.

This actual experience illustrates exactly the principle of coast
defence by the power having relatively the weaker navy. It cannot,
indeed, drive away a body numerically much stronger; but, if itself
respectable in force, it can compel the enemy to keep united. Thereby
is minimized the injury caused to a coast-line by the dispersion of the
enemy's force along it in security, such as was subsequently acquired
by the British in 1813-14, and by the United States Navy during the
Civil War. The enemy's fears defend the coast, and protect the nation,
by securing the principal benefit of the coast-line--coastwise and
maritime trade, and the revenue thence proceeding. In order, however,
to maintain this imposing attitude, the defending state must hold ready
a concentrated force, of such size that the enemy cannot safely divide
his own--a force, for instance, such as that estimated by Gouverneur
Morris, twenty years before 1812.[399] The defendant fleet, further,
must be able to put to sea at a moment inconvenient to