advantage gained by
either side was small, and the only effect was to keep the war
sentiment at fever-heat.

[Illustration: Blockading the Mouth of the Mississippi.]

The first regularly commissioned man-of-war of the Confederate States
was the "Sumter," an old passenger steamer remodelled so as to carry
five guns. This vessel, though only registering five hundred tons, and
smaller than many a steam-yacht of to-day, roamed over the high seas
at will for more than a year, burning and destroying the
merchant-vessels of the North, and avoiding easily any conflicts with
the Northern men-of-war. Her exploits made the owners of American
merchant-vessels tremble for their property; and the United States
authorities made the most desperate attempts to capture her, but in
vain. In his journal of Dec. 3, 1861, Capt. Semmes of the "Sumter"
writes with the greatest satisfaction: "The enemy has done us the
honor to send in pursuit of us the 'Powhattan,' the 'Niagara,' the
'Iroquois,' the 'Keystone State,' and the 'San Jacinto.'" Any one of
these vessels could have blown the 'Sumter' out of water with one
broadside, but the cunning and skill of her commander enabled her to
escape them all.

It was on the 1st of June, 1861, that the "Sumter" cast loose from the
levee at New Orleans, and started down the Mississippi on her way to
the open sea. For two months workmen had been busy fitting her for the
new part she was to play. The long rows of cabins on the upper deck
were torn down; and a heavy eight-inch shell-gun, mounted on a pivot
between the fore and mainmasts, and the grinning muzzles of four
twenty-four-pounder howitzers peeping from the ports, told of her
warlike character. The great levee of the Crescent City was crowded
with people that day. Now and again the roll of the drum, or the
stirring notes of "Dixie," would be heard, as some volunteer company
marched down to the river to witness the departure of the entire
Confederate navy. Slowly the vessel dropped down the river, and,
rounding the English turn, boomed out with her great gun a parting
salute to the city she was never more to see. Ten miles from the mouth
of the river she stopped; for anchored off the bar below lay the
powerful United States steamer "Brooklyn," with three other
men-of-war, each more than a match for the infant navy of the
Confederacy. Eleven days the "Sumter" lay tugging at her anchors in
the muddy current of the great river, but at last the time