Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War. By David G. Surdam. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. xxiv, 286. $34.95.

The contribution of the blockade to Union victory during the American Civil War has long been controversial. Among those historians who have questioned the blockade s efficacy are Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, William N. Still Jr., Raimondo Luraghi, Frank Lawrence Owsley, and Stephen R. Wise. They note that, until the war s last year, the blockade remained a leaky sieve and that the agrarian South never lost a major battle for lack of arms and ammunition. The blockade s scholarly advocates, including Edwin B. Coddington, Bern Anderson, and Stanley Lebergott, stress in contrast such indirect impacts as the disruption of internal trade, the over-taxing of southern rail-roads, and the dislocation of the Confederate economy overall.