Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

A year after the first battle was fought the naval force of the United States had practically interdicted all legitimate commerce with the Southern States. No more effective method of warfare could have been devised. At the outbreak of the war the States in rebellion were able to manufacture but few of the articles indispensable to the ordinary life of a people. Their wealth was purely agricultural. Cotton and tobacco were their only exports. For a supply of manufactures the South had depended wholly upon its trade with the North and with Europe. The natural effect of the war was greatly to lessen production, and the blockade made it impossible to find a market for any large portion of the diminished product of cotton. As a striking evidence of the prosperity in the South at the time it complained of oppression, the largest cotton crop which had ever been grown was that of 1860. It numbered more than five million two hundred thousand bales, nearly four and a half millions of which had found a ready market in Europe and the North before the outbreak of the war. The crop of 1861 was little more than one-half that of the preceding year. Of the three and a half millions which remained available for export at the end of 1861 it was estimated that up to August, 1862, not more than fifty thousand bales had been carried to England, the principal foreign consumer.

The demand for food created by the Southern army caused a majority of the plantations to raise corn, and the cotton crop of 1862 did not amount to more than one million bales, very little of which found a foreign market; and the supply and exportation diminished from this time onward. Cotton which sold in December, 1861, in Liverpool for 11¾_d_. per pound had risen in December, 1862, to 24½_d_. per pound, and as a result, half a million persons in England, dependent for their daily bread upon this manufacturing industry, were thrown out of employment and reduced to beggary. So great was the distress that by April, 1863, nearly two million pounds sterling had been expended for their relief, and this sum does not include the vast amounts expended in local volunteer charities. English manufacturers saw that the supply of the raw product from America could no longer be depended upon, and efforts were made to introduce the manufacture of the inferior staple from India, but the experiment proved in the main unsatisfactory and unprofitable.

The stringency of the blockade which prevented the exportation of cotton, prevented also the importation of manufactured articles. While compelled to acknowledge this fact, the Confederate Secretary of State, Mr. Benjamin, attempted very cleverly to turn it to account by showing the advantages which would accrue to the commercial and manufacturing classes of England by the speedy triumph of the rebellion. Writing to Mr. Mason, who represented the Confederacy in England, Mr. Benjamin said, "The almost total cessation of external commerce for the last two years has produced the complete exhaustion of all articles of foreign growth and manufacture, and it is but a moderate computation to estimate the imports into the Confederacy at three hundred millions of dollars for the first six months which will ensue after the treaty of peace." The unexpressed part of the proposition which this statement covered was the most interesting. The merchants and ship-owners of England were to understand that the sale and transportation of this vast amount of fabrics would fall into the hands of England if the Confederacy should succeed, and that if it should fail, the domestic trade of the United States would absorb the whole of it. It was a shrewd appeal to a nation whose foreign policy has always been largely influenced by considerations of trade.

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE BLOCKADE.

The economic condition of the South at this time may be compared to that of a man with full purse, lost in a desert. Southern cotton would easily sell in the markets of New York or Liverpool for four times its price in Charleston, while the manufactures of Manchester or of Lowell were worth in Charleston four times the price in Liverpool or New York. Exchange was rendered by the blockade practically impossible. When the profits of a successful voyage from Liverpool to Charleston and return, would more than repay the expense of the construction of the best steamer and of the voyage, the temptation to evade the blockade was altogether too strong to be resisted by the merchants and manufacturers of England. Blockade- running became a regular business with them, and the extent to which it was carried may be inferred from the fact that during the war the American fleet captured or sunk more than seven hundred vessels bound from British ports to ports of the Confederacy. How many vessels escaped our navy and safely ran the blockade may never be known, but for three years it was a steady contest between the navy of the United States and the blockade-runners of England. The persistent course of the latter was stimulated both by cupidity and by ill will to this country. They were anxious to make pecuniary gains for themselves and to aid the Confederacy at the same time. They were checked only by the extra-hazardous character imparted to the trade by the alertness and superior vigilance of our cruisers which sent many millions of English ventures to less profitable markets and many millions to the adjudication of our own Prize- courts.

The establishment and maintenance of a blockade is not accounted by naval officers as the most brilliant service to which in the line of their profession they may be deputed, but it was a service of inestimable value to the cause of the Union, and it was performed with a skill and thoroughness never surpassed. The blockade required an enormous force of men. In addition to the marines, to the large body of soldiers transferred from time to time to the navy, and to the rebel prisoners that joined in the service, there were 121,807 men specially enlisted in the navy during the war. But for the aid thus rendered by the navy, the hard fight would have been longer and more sanguinary. Had not the South been thus deprived of the munitions of war, of clothing and of all manner of supplies which England and France were eager to furnish her, we should not have seen the end of the civil war in 1865, and we should have been subjected to all the hazards implied by the indefinite continuance of the struggle.

The census of 1860 shows that the thirty-three States and seven Territories, which at that time composed the United States, contained a population of 31,443,791. Fifteen of these States with 12,140,296 inhabitants were slave-holding, more than four millions of the population being slaves; eighteen with an aggregate population of 19,303,494 were classed as free. Four of the fifteen slave States, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky, whose people numbered three and one-half millions, constituted what were known as the Border slave States—West Virginia being added to the list in 1862. Though a considerable proportion of the inhabitants of these States, from association and interest, sympathized with the South, they contributed to the Union cause an army equal to two hundred thousand men enlisted for three years, and throughout the war they were loyal to the National Government. Many of the inhabitants of these States fought in the Confederate Army, but this loss was more than compensated by the effective aid rendered by the loyal men who joined the Union Army from the rebellious States. Tennessee furnished more than thirty thousand men to the armies of the Union, and from almost every State which formed a portion of the Confederacy men enlisted in the loyal forces. It may with reasonable precision be affirmed that the encouragement which the Confederacy received from the slave States that remained true to the Union, was more than offset by the effective aid rendered by loyal men residing within the limits of the rebellious States.

STRENGTH OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY.

As the source of supply for an army the Southern Confederacy had eleven States with an aggregate population of nine millions. It is difficult to estimate with accuracy the numerical strength of the army which they organized at the beginning of the war. In a semi-official publication it was asserted that the army numbered more than five hundred thousand men, but as twenty thousand of this army were credited to Maryland and thirty-five thousand to Missouri, the number given was evidently a gross exaggeration. The statement was probably made for effect upon the North rather than in the interest of truth. A member of the Confederate Congress from North Carolina stated in debate in 1864 that the Confederate muster-roll numbered more than four hundred thousand men, "of whom probably one-half were not there." During the entire period of the war it is probable that eleven hundred thousand men were embodied in the Confederate Army, though its effective strength did not at any time consist of more than one-half that number. But this force was obtained by the South at great sacrifice. The necessity of a stringent conscription act was felt as early as April 16, 1862, at which time the first Enrolment Act was passed by the Confederate Congress. Under this Act, which was amended on the 27th of September of the same year, Mr. Davis issued on the 15th of July, 1863, his first conscription proclamation which called into the service of the Confederacy all white men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five who were not legally exempted from military service. The date of the proclamation shows that it was forced upon the Confederates by Lee's abortive invasion of Pennsylvania, and was intended to fill the ranks of the army which had been shattered and beaten on the field of Gettysburg. Further legislation by the Confederate Congress in February, 1864, extended the enrolment so as to include all white male residents of the Confederate States between the ages of seventeen and fifty. In February, 1865, Mr. Davis estimated that more than one hundred and fifty thousand men were added to the Confederate armies by this forced conscription.

Comparing the strength of the Confederate Army with the population from which it was recruited, and taking into account the absolute lack of provision made for the comfort of the Southern soldier, the insufficient provision made for his sustenance and clothing, and the consequent desertion which made it imperative to repair diminished strength, it is evident that the conscription legislation bore with fearful severity upon the people of the South. Comprehensive as was the Enrolment Act, which rendered liable to military duty the entire male population between the ages of seventeen and fifty, the South was compelled to overstep its self-imposed limit. The forces which Lee and Johnston surrendered contained so many boys unfitted by youth and so many men unfitted by age for military service, that a Northern General epigrammatically remarked that for its armies the Confederacy had been compelled in the end to rob alike the cradle and the grave.