[478] Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VI, pp. 15, 37.
[479] In 1860 the South exported $150,000,000 worth of cotton, and Mobile was the second cotton port of America. Scharf, “History of the Confederate Navy,” pp. 439, 533. Besides the regular ship channel there were two shallow entrances to Mobile Bay, through which blockade-runners passed. Soley, “The Blockade and the Cruisers,” p. 134. Regular water communication with New Orleans was kept up until 1862 through Mississippi Sound. Scharf, p. 535; Maclay, “A History of the United States Navy,” Vol. II, p. 445.
[480] Miller, “Alabama,” p. 167; Acts of the Called Sess. (1861), p. 123; Acts of 2d Called and 1st Regular Sess. (1861), pp. 151, 168, 214, 278.
[481] The blockading force before Mobile in 1861 often consisted of only one vessel (Soley, p. 134), and the people of Mobile believed that foreign nations would not recognize the blockade as effective. There was an English squadron under Admiral Milne in the Gulf, and on Aug. 4, 1861, the Mobile Register and Advertiser said that a conflict between the English and United States forces was expected; the English were then to raise the blockade. Scharf, p. 442.
[482] This, however, was not the plan favored by Ex-Gov. A. B. Moore, who, on Feb. 3, 1862, wrote to President Davis stating his belief that the permission given by the Federal fleet to export cotton was a “Yankee trick” to get cotton to leave port in order to seize it. He thought that the Confederate government should forbid all exportation of cotton until the close of the war. “This leaky blockade system should be deprecated as one [in which the parties] are either dupes or knaves and [is] not in the least calculated to demonstrate the fact that our cotton crops are a necessity to the commerce of the world.” If cotton was not a necessity to Europe, then the sooner the South knew it the better; if it was a necessity, the sooner Europe knew it the better. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. I, p. 905.
[483] Acts of Feb. 6 and Dec. 10, 1861.
[484] O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, p. 735; Ser. I, Vol. XXXIII, Pt. III, p. 805.
[485] The Confederate War and Treasury Departments required that each steamship coming and going should reserve one-half its tonnage for government use. The owners of an outgoing vessel had to make bond to return with one-half the cargo for the government and the other half in articles the importation of which was not prohibited by the Confederate government. The Confederate government paid five pence sterling a pound on outgoing freight, payable in a British port. On return freight £25 a ton was paid in cotton at a Confederate port. The expenses of one blockade-runner for one trip amounted to $80,265; while the gross profits were $172,000, leaving a net gain of $91,735 on the trip. Scharf, pp. 481, 485.
[486] Joseph Jacobs, “Drug Conditions.”
[487] Soley, pp. 44, 156.