FOOTNOTES
[1] The first Confederate privateer to get to sea was the Savannah. She took one prize and was captured. Another, the Beauregard, was taken after a short cruise. A third, the Petrel, mistook the frigate St. Lawrence for a merchantman and attempted to take her, but was sunk by a broadside. After a year the blockade stopped privateering.
[2] Captain Wilkes was congratulated by the Secretary of the Navy, thanked by the House of Representatives, and given a grand banquet in Boston; and the whole country was jubilant. The British minister at Washington was directed to demand the liberation of the prisoners and "a suitable apology for the aggression," and if not answered in seven days, or if unfavorably answered, was to return to London at once.
[3] Early in the war an agent was sent to Great Britain by the Confederate navy department to procure vessels to be used as commerce destroyers. The Florida and Alabama were built at Liverpool and sent to sea unarmed. Their guns and ammunition were sent in vessels from another British port. The Shenandoah was purchased at London (her name was then the Sea King) and was met at Madeira by a tender from Liverpool with men and guns. On her way to Australia, the Shenandoah destroyed seven of our merchantmen. She then went to Bering Sea and in one week captured twenty- five whalers, most of which she destroyed. This was in June, 1865, after the war was over. In August a British ship captain informed the commander of the Shenandoah that the Confederacy no longer existed. The Shenandoah was then taken to Liverpool and delivered to the British government, which turned her over to the United States.
[4] Read Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. IV, pp. 600-614.
[5] In 1864 a Confederate ironclad ram, the Albemarle, appeared on the waters of Albemarle Sound. As no Union war ship could harm her, Commander W. B. Gushing planned an expedition to destroy her by a torpedo. On the night of October 27, with fourteen companions in a steam launch, he made his way to the ram, blew her up with the torpedo, and with one other man escaped. His adventures on the way back to the fleet read like fiction, and are told by himself in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. IV, pp. 634-640.
[6] The hole made in the Cumberland by the Merrimac was "large enough for a man to enter." Through this the water poured in so rapidly that the sick, wounded, and many who were not disabled were carried down with the ship. After she sank, the flag at the masthead still waved above the water. Read Longfellow's poem The Cumberland.
[7] The Monitor was designed by John Ericsson, who was born in Sweden in 1803. After serving as an engineer in the Swedish army, he went to England; and then came to our country in 1839. He was the inventor of the first practical screw propeller for steamboats, and by his invention of the revolving turret for war vessels he completely changed naval architecture. His name is connected with many great inventions. He died in 1889.
[8] When the Confederates evacuated Norfolk some months later, the Merrimac was blown up. The Monitor, in December, 1862, went down in a storm at sea.
[9] As the right of a State to secede was not acknowledged, this direct tax of $20,000,000 was apportioned among the Confederate as well as among the Union states. The Confederate states, of course, did not pay their share.
[10] Deeds, mortgages, bills of lading, bank checks, patent medicines, wines, liquors, tobacco, proprietary articles, and many other things were taxed. Between 1862 and 1865 about $780,000,000 was raised in this way.
[11] Between July 1, 1861, and August 31, 1865, bonds to the amount of $1,109,000,000 were issued and sold.
[12] The Legal Tender Act, which authorized the issue of greenbacks, was enacted in 1862, and two years later $449,000,000 were in circulation. The greenbacks could not be used to pay duties on imports or interest on the public debt, which were payable in specie.
[13] This paper fractional currency consisted of small paper bills in denominations of 3, 5, 10, 15, 25, and 50 cents. Read the account in Rhodes's History of the U. S., Vol. V, pp. 191-196.
[14] In 1902 changed to one hundred per cent.
[15] When Sherman was in command at Memphis, a funeral procession was allowed to pass beyond the Union lines. The coffin, however, was full of medicines for the Confederate army.
[16] Blankets were sometimes made of cow hair, or long moss from the seaboard, and even carpets were cut up and sent as blankets to the army.
[17] The newspapers of the time give evidence of the scarcity of paper. Some are printed on half sheets, a few on brown paper, and some on note paper.
[18] Riots of women, prompted by the high prices of food, occurred in Atlanta, Mobile, Richmond, and other places.
[19] Read "War Diary of a Union Woman in the South," in the Century Magazine, October, 1889; Rhodes's History of the U. S., Vol. V, pp. 348-384.