This was not the last time that opportunity knocked at the door of the Confederacy. It knocked again, and loudly, as will be shown in the next chapter, the same year. Either event, taken alone, appears decisive. For as we contemplate the events of the 21st of July, 1861, it quite appears as if the flag of two republics--three, perhaps, and conceivably four--might have been flying over this great American domain to-day if Johnston had pressed his advance down the Warrenton turnpike early Monday morning, July 22d. Wars, divisions, European intrusion, retrogression and darkness would have been America's fate, instead of that imperial advance, with liberty and union, which has dazzled and heartened the whole world. CHAPTER XXII IF THE CONFEDERATE STATES HAD PURCHASED THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S FLEET IN 1861 In the preceding chapter I have noted the disastrous consequences of the rejection of John H. Reagan's plan, urged at Montgomery at the very foundation of the Confederacy, for the prompt occupation of the south bank of the Ohio River as the advanced line of defense, and the equally unfavorable result of the failure of Johnston to press on to the Potomac after the great success at Manassas. Gettysburg was a pivotal combat, also; for if Lee had been supported by Stuart's cavalry on that occasion, there is at least a possibility that the war's tide might have been turned then and there. But there was a narrower contingency than either one of these. To a positively decisive extent, the success of the National forces in subjugating the Southern States turned on the sea power. The conquest of the Confederacy was in fact a matter of supreme difficulty as it was; and if the South had possessed a respectable navy, and had been able to keep its ports open and steadily exchange its cotton in Europe for the materials and munitions of war, the conquest would not have been possible at all. The chance for the establishment of such a navy lay within the grasp of the Confederate statesmen, and was by them let slip. Neither they, nor any one else at the time, realized how easy the thing would have been. It is first necessary to explain in what situation the National government was, at the outset of the war, in the matter of a naval force. Nominally the United States navy consisted of ninety vessels, but of these fifty were utterly obsolete and unusable except as supply ships. Of the other forty, twenty were in a state of hopeless unreadiness. Several of the best ships were in the remotest corners of the world. The home squadron was composed of twelve ships, of which only seven were steamers! Nearly fifty years after the invention of steam navigation, the United States depended principally upon sailing vessels for its defense. Only three trustworthy warships were left in Northern waters for the defense of such ports as New York, Boston and Philadelphia.