And this true condition of foreign affairs, the Confederate State Department did know, in great part; should have known in detail; and owed it to the people to explain and promulgate. But for some occult reason, Mr. Benjamin refused to view the European landscape, except through the Claude Lorrain glass which Mr. Slidell persistently held up before him. The exposé of Mr. Yancey, the few sturdy truths Mr. Mason later told; and the detailed resumé sent by Mr. DeLeon and printed in the North—all these were ignored; and the wishes of the whole people were disregarded, that the line begun upon, should not be deviated from. There may have been something deeply underlying this policy; for Secretary Benjamin was clear-sighted, shrewd and well-informed. But what that something was has never been divulged; and the people—believing the Secretary too able to be deluded by his subordinate—revolted.
The foreign policy grew more and more into popular disfavor; the press condemned it, in no stinted terms; it permeated the other branches of the government and, finally, reacted upon the armies in the field. For the growing dislike of his most trusted adviser began to affect Mr. Davis; his ready assumption of all responsibility at the beginning having taught the people to look direct to him for all of good, or of evil, alike.
As disaster followed disaster to southern arms; as one fair city after another fell into the lap of the enemy; as the blockade drew its coil tighter and tighter about the vitals of the Confederacy—the cry of the people was raised to their chief; demanding the cause of it all. The first warm impulses of patriotic and inflammable masses had pedestaled him as a demigod. The revulsion was gradual; but, with the third year of unrelieved blockade, it became complete. And this was due, in part, to that proclivity of masses to measure men by results, rather than by their means for accomplishment; it was due in greater part, perhaps, to the President's unyielding refusal to sacrifice either his convictions, or his favorites, to popular clamor, however re-enforced by argument, or reason.
Mr. Davis certainly seemed to rely more upon Mr. Benjamin than any member of his Cabinet; and the public laid at that now unpopular official's door all errors of policy—domestic as well as foreign. Popular wrath ever finds a scape-goat; but in the very darkest hour Mr. Benjamin remained placid and smiling, his brow unclouded and his sleek, pleasant manner deprecating the rumbling of the storm he had raised, by his accomplishments and sophistries. When his removal was clamorously demanded by popular voice, his chief closed his ears and moved on unheeding—grave—defiant!
Calm retrospect shows that the Confederacy's commissioners were, from first to last, only played with by the skilled sophists of Europe. And, ere the end came, that absolute conviction penetrated the blockade; convincing the South that her policy would remain one of strict non-intervention.
After each marked southern success, would come some revival of recognition rumors; but these were ever coupled, now, with an important "if!" If New Orleans had not fallen; if we had won Antietam; if Gettysburg had been a victory—then we might have been welcomed into the family of nations. But over the mass of thinkers settled the dark conviction that Europe saw her best interest, in standing by to watch the sections rend and tear each other to the utmost. Every fiber either lost was so much subtraction from that balance of power, threatening to pass across the Atlantic. The greater the straits to which we reduce each other, said the South, the better will it please Europe; and the only faith in her at last, was that she hoped to see the breach permanent and irreconcilable, and with it all hopes of rival power die!
If the theory be correct, that it was the intent of the Great Powers to foster the chance of two rival governments on this continent, it seems short-sighted in one regard. For—had they really recognized the dire extremity, to which the South was at last brought, they should either have furnished her means, directly or indirectly, to prolong the strife; or should have intervened and established a broken and shattered duality, in place of the stable and recemented Union.
Nor can thinkers, on either side, cavil at Europe's policy during that war; calculating, selfish and cruel as it may seem to the sentimentalist. If corporations really have no bowels, governments can not be looked to for nerves. Interest is the life blood of their systems; and interest was doubtless best subserved by the course of the Great Powers. For the rumors of destitution and of disaffection in France and England—caused by the blockade-begotten "cotton famine"—that crept through the Chinese wall, were absurdly magnified, both as to their proportions and their results. And the sequel proved that it was far cheaper for either nation to feed a few thousand idle operatives—or to quell a few incipient bread riots—than to unsettle a fixed policy, and that at the risk of a costly foreign war.
There was bitter disappointment in the South, immediately succeeding dissipation of these rosy, but nebulous, hopes in the kingship of cotton. Then reaction came—strong, general and fruitful. Sturdy "Johnny Reb" yearned for British rifles, shoes, blankets and bacon; but he wanted them most of all, to win his own independence and to force its recognition!
There are optimists everywhere; and even the dark days of Dixie proved no exception to the rule. It was not unusual to hear prate of the vast benefits derived from the blockade; of the energy, resource and production, expressed under its cruel constriction! Such optimists—equally at fault as were their pessimistic opponents—pointed proudly to the powder-mills, blast-furnaces, foundries and rolling-mills, springing up on every hand. They saw the great truth that the internal resources of the South developed with amazing rapidity; that arms were manufactured and supplies of vital need created, as it were out of nothing; but they missed the true reason for that abnormal development, which was the dire stress from isolation. They rejoiced to very elation at a popular effort, spontaneous—unanimous—supreme! But they realized little that it was exhaustive as well.