11. The commerce raiders did little to alter the course of the war
Despite the damages done to Union shipping by Alabama and other Confederate commerce raiders, their contribution to the war effort was minimal. The hope of the Confederate Navy was they would force the Union to disperse ships from the coastal blockade and use them to hunt the raiders. The strategy would allow more blockade runners to elude the remaining ships and deliver badly needed goods to the Confederate ports. It failed. By 1863, the Union fleet included ships designed specifically for operations in coastal waters and the estuaries, upon which much of the burden of the blockade fell.
Blockade duty was popular duty, and many thousands of landsmen volunteered for it, finding it more appealing than living in tents and marching. The ships were manned by crews who reasonably expected the financial windfall of prize money from capturing a blockade runner. Sailors enjoyed better food and living conditions, though they were certainly not luxurious by any standard. Unlike the Army, Navy crews were integrated at the time, as they had been up to that point in American history. It was customary for ships in a foreign port to take on volunteers to add to their crews, regardless of race or the citizenship of the volunteer.