 It posed the first threat to national security because it had the potential to have instantly put more hostile ships at sea than the U.S. Navy could effectively suppress while also striving to enforce a blockade.Furthermore, it resulted in Lincoln's first proclamation of a blockade, the first internationally recognized act of belligerence on his part, which helped to nudge the war into international waters; and it produced the first Union strategy for the conduct of war.President Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, ordered the Blockading Squadron to secure the primary privateering ports of the South, which was accomplished quickly by joint Army/Navy actions against Forts Hattaras and Clark at the inlet to the NC Sounds, Forts Beauregard and Walker at Port Royal Sound, and Ship Island near New Orleans—all by the end of 1861, while other military efforts, that is, purely Army efforts, stalled.