dr. holloway, anna holloway, and to this wonderful institution for putting together this weekend. for those of our guests who are watching this at home on cspan, let me make a plug here for this museum. if you have not been here, this is worth the trip, and everybody in this room knows that already. some of you at home may not, so let me argue that you should come out here and make a visit. my job here this morning at the podium is to talk about the sizz civil war along the atlantic coast. it seems an entirely appropriate subject for this event, marking as it does the 150th anniversary of the most iconic naval confrontation of the american civil war here on hampton roads. this battle was a centerpiece of a broader war that took place all up and down the atlantic coast from washington, d.c. to key west. but rather than talk about the battle in particular which others will do today, i'm going to try to establish some context for that battle and describe the war of which it was such an important part. and i'm going to start by talking about the blockade. now, this is a subject that o