James Russell Soley, Professor U. S. Navy, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, The blockade and the cruisers
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[32] existence of the fact. The President's two proclamations did not therefore constitute actual notice, because at the date of their issue there was not even a pretence that the blockade existed. Nor do they appear to have been so intended. The idea was rather to publish a manifesto declaring in a general way the intentions of the Government, and then to carry them out as promptly as circumstances would permit.

The blockade therefore began as a blockade de facto, not as a blockade by notification. During the summer of 1861 vessels were stationed at different points, one after another, by which the blockade at those points was separately established. Notices, of a more or less informal character, were given in some cases by the commanding officer of the blockading force; but no general practice was observed. When Captain Poor, in the Brooklyn, took his station off the Mississippi, he merely informed the officer commanding the forts that New Orleans was blockaded. Pendergrast, the commanding officer at Hampton Roads, issued a formal document on April 30, calling attention to the President's proclamation in relation to Virginia and North Carolina, and giving notice that he had a sufficient force there for the purpose of carrying out the proclamation. He added that vessels coming from a distance, and ignorant of the proclamation, would be warned off. But Pendergrast's announcement, though intended as a notification, was marked by the same defects as the proclamation. The actual blockade and the notice of it must always be commensurate. At this time, there were several vessels in Hampton Roads, but absolutely no force on the coast of North Carolina; and the declaration was open to the charge of stating what was not an existing fact.

The importance of these early formalities arises from the