on.
December 1, 1863: 588 ships in commission.
December 1, 1864: 671 ships in commission.)

The cause of the Confederacy, although her white population of seven
million souls was smaller by two-thirds than that of the North, was
thus far from hopeless. The North undoubtedly possessed immense
resources. But an efficient army, even when the supply of men and
arms be unlimited, cannot be created in a few weeks, or even in a few
months, least of all an army of invasion. Undisciplined troops, if
the enemy be ill-handled, may possibly stand their ground on the
defensive, as did Jackson's riflemen at New Orleans, or the colonials
at Bunker's Hill. But fighting behind earthworks is a very different
matter to making long marches, and executing complicated manoeuvres
under heavy fire. Without a trained staff and an efficient
administration, an army is incapable of movement. Even with a
well-organised commissariat it is a most difficult business to keep a
marching column supplied with food and forage; and the problem of
transport, unless a railway or a river be available, taxes the
ability of the most experienced leader. A march of eighty or one
hundred miles into an enemy's country sounds a simple feat, but
unless every detail has been most carefully thought out, it will not
improbably be more disastrous than a lost battle. A march of two or
three hundred miles is a great military operation; a march of six
hundred an enterprise of which there are few examples. To handle an
army in battle is much less difficult than to bring it on to the
field in good condition; and the student of the Civil War may note
with profit how exceedingly chary were the generals, during the first
campaigns, of leaving their magazines. It was not till their
auxiliary services had gained experience that they dared to manoeuvre
freely; and the reason lay not only in deficiencies of organisation,
but in the nature of the country. Even for a stationary force,
standing on the defensive, unless immediately backed by a large town
or a railway, the difficulties of bringing up supplies were enormous.
For an invading army, increasing day by day the distance from its
base, they became almost insuperable. In 1861, the population of the
United States, spread over a territory as large as Europe, was less
than that of England, and a great part of that territory was
practically unexplored. Even at the present day their seventy
millions are but a handful in comparison wi