The story of the Confederate Navy been told less often than the spectacular history of the armies, but many of the familiar elements are there: the exuberant hopes of the Confederacy, the risk in spite of very long odds against success, the basic deficits in resources becoming desperate needs, and the dogged, exhausted persistence in the face of certain defeat. The story is epic in its importance to a nation and a people. New strategies and developing technology, however, introduce new elements into this story of the Civil War. The officers and men of the Confederate Navy were defeated at every turn by a national policy and a local tangle of political, economic, and social issues. Southern officers resigned their Union Navy commissions to fight for principle -- and soon found themselves enmeshed in construction schedules and bureaucratic delays. All too often, naval officers on both sides found themselves engaged in what is now termed "modern warfare". In this story of the Civil War, the phrase "arms and the man" begins to take on the contemporary ring of man and machine and man within and against the system.
