At the end of February the Union monitor _Montauk_ destroyed the Confederate privateer _Nashville_ near Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee River in Georgia. In April nine Union monitors steamed in to test the strength of Charleston; but, as they got back more than they could give, Admiral Du Pont wisely decided not to try the fight-to-a-finish he had meant to make next morning. Wassaw Sound in Georgia was the scene of a desperate duel on the seventeenth of June, when the Union monitor _Weehawken_ captured the old blockade-runner _Fingal_, which had been converted into the new Confederate ram _Atlanta_. The third week in August witnessed another bombardment of Charleston, this time on a larger scale, for a longer time, and by military as well as naval means. But Charleston remained defiant and unconquered both this year and the next. Confederate raiders were at work along the trade routes of the world in '63, doing much harm by capture and destruction, and even more by shaking the security of the American mercantile marine. American crews were hard to get when so many hands were wanted for other war work; and American vessels were increasingly apt to seek the safety of a neutral flag. Slowly, and with much perverse interference to overcome in the course of its harassing duties, the Union navy was getting the strangle-hold that killed the sea-girt South. By '64 the North had secured this strangle-hold; and nothing but foreign intervention or the political death of the Northern War Party could possibly shake it off. The South was feeling its practical enislement as never before. The strong right arm of the Union navy held it fast at every point but three--Wilmington, Charleston, and Mobile; and round these three the stern blockaders grew stronger every day. The Sabine Pass and Galveston also remained in Southern hands; and the border town of Matamoras still imported contraband. But these other three points were closely watched; and the greatly lessened contraband that did get through them now only served the western South, which had been completely severed from the eastern South by the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The left arm of the Union navy now held the whole line of the Mississippi, while the gripping hand held all the tributary streams--Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee--from which the Union armies were to invade, divide, and devastate the eastern South this year. Several Southern raiders were still at large in '64. But the most famous or notorious three have each their own year of glory. The _Florida_ belongs to '63, the _Shenandoah_ to '65. So the one great raiding story we have now to tell is that of the _Alabama_, the greatest of them all.