the destruction of their country not less than that of the Yankees. The assertion admits of some qualification. Sweeping remarks in history are generally unjust. Among those engaged in the business of banking and exchange in the South, there were undoubtedly some enlightened and public-spirited men, who had been seduced by the example or constrained by the competition of meaner and more avaricious men of the same profession, to array themselves against the currency, and to commit offences from which they would have shrunk in horror, had they not been disguised by the casuistry of commerce and gain. It was generally thought in the South reprehensible to refuse the national currency in the payment of debts. Yet the broker, who demanded ten dollars in this currency for one in gold, really was guilty of nine times refusing the Confederate money. It was accounted shocking for citizens in the South to speculate in soldiers' clothing and bread. Yet the broker, who demanded nine or ten prices for gold, the representative of all values, speculated alike in every necessary in the country. Nor was this the greatest of their offences. With unsurpassed shamelessness brokers in the Confederacy exposed the currency of the North for sale, and demanded for it four hundred per cent. premium over that of the Confederacy! This act of benefit to the Yankees was openly allowed by the government. A bill had been introduced in Congress to prohibit this traffic, and to extirpate this infamous anomaly in our history; but it failed of enactment, and its failure can only be attributed to the grossest stupidity, or to sinister influences of the most dishonorable kind. The traffic was immensely profitable. State bonds and bank bills to the amount of many millions were sent North by the brokers, and the rates of discount were readily submitted to when the returns were made in Yankee paper money, which, in the Richmond shops, was worth in Confederate notes five dollars for one. One-but only one-cause of the depreciation of the Confederate currency was illicit trade. It had done more to demoralize the Confederacy than any thing else. The inception of this trade was easily winked at by the Confederate authorities; it commenced with paltry importations across the Potomac; it was said that the country wanted medicines, surgical |