Chap. XII.

When asked whether the principal entrance to Charleston Harbour had not been choked up, he said: "The best proof of the contrary was that in spite of the sunken vessels and the blockading squadron a British steamer laden with contraband of war had just succeeded in getting in."1

In fact the measure seems to have been ineffectual. Whether from the body of water brought down by the rivers, from the wash of the ebb tides increased by the strong westerly winds to which those harbours are exposed, or from other causes, the sunken stone-ships do not appear to have produced any lasting obstruction, nor to have added materially to the effectiveness of the blockading squadrons.

It was not until many months after the commencement of the blockade that it began to tell on the resources of the Confederacy, or on the trade and industry of Europe. Nor was the efficiency of it really tested till that pressure came. The great staple export of the South was cotton. Cotton is sown in the spring; the crop begins to be gathered in September, but it does not come into the market in any quantity earlier than December; exportation is busiest during January, February, and March, and the great bulk is delivered by April. It was estimated that only about 750,000 bales, at most, of the crop of 1860 remained on hand in the South at the time when the blockade began. The crop of 1861 was about 2,750,000 balesa little more than half the total quantity consumed in 1860; and this supply, or so much of it as could be properly picked, cleaned, and baled, would, together with what remained from the previous year, have been available for exportation in the winter and spring of 1861–62. The quantity actually sent abroad, however, up to July or August 1862 was reckoned

2

1 Lord Lyons to Earl Russell, 14th January, 1862.

2 5,200,754 bales. (American Annual Cyclop dia for 1861, p. 252.)

not to exceed 50,000 bales, the great bulk of which, Chap. XII. but not the whole, went to England. About 1,000,000 bales had before that time been destroyed by the Southerners themselves to prevent its falling into the hands of "the enemy"-that is, of the Federal Government.1 Mr. Anderson, a member of the British Legation, writing in October 1862, after a journey into Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas, estimated the crop of that year as at most 1,000,000 bales. "It was calculated," he adds, "that even this small amount would be so reduced, from the impossibility of getting it picked in some districts owing to the loss of slaves, and from the difficulty in baling and storing it, owing to the want of hemp and other necessary materials, that the supply for the market would be but trifling. If the war goes on, no expectations are entertained of there being any crop in 1863, as the ground will be thrown into corn. I rode for miles over a cotton district in Tennessee, in which almost every field was growing corn, and I was informed that it was the same through the whole length of the valley of the Mississippi." This information was confirmed by independent accounts from Virginia and Alabama. In December 1862 a bale of cotton worth about 40 dollars in the South could be sold for five times that sum in New York. Very little was now brought to the coast. What there was remained stored up in the interior; and its owners-or at any rate their neighbours-were ready to make a bonfire of it whenever there was danger of its being reached by the Federal armies.

Whilst the chief industry of the South languished for want of a market, and the whole country became rapidly impoverished, the supply of all goods customarily imported from abroad became almost entirely exhausted -a calamity made all the more severe by the fact that

1 These figures are taken from a report of Mr. Bunch, British Consul at Charleston. (Consul Bunch to Earl Russell, 15th August, 1862.) 2 Mr. Anderson to Mr. Stuart, 1st October, 1862.

Chap. XII. the Confederated States had hardly any domestic manufactures. Articles, not merely of luxury but of comfort and convenience, for which they had been wont to depend on their trade with the North and with Europe, rose exorbitantly in price.1 Civilization, by multiplying our wants, by the division of labour which it introduces, and by opening regular channels of exchange, increases our dependence on one another; and, if we consider how many things every civilized people imports which it could ill do without, we may understand, though imperfectly, what such a people must suffer from an almost total stoppage of foreign trade.

One effect of this pressure was to impart activity to blockade-running. As the first winter of the war passed away as summer followed spring, and it became evident that both parties had strength and resolution for a long struggle the temptations held out by this new field of mercantile adventure necessarily increased. During the first year the trade had been chiefly carried on by sailing schooners and small steamers owned in the South, running from one Southern port to another, and

1 "The almost total cessation of external, commerce for the last two years has produced the complete exhaustion of the supply of all articles of foreign growth and manufacture, and it is but a moderate computation to estimate the imports into the Confederacy at 300,000,000 dollars for the first six months which will ensue after the Treaty of Peace. The articles which will meet with most ready sale (and in enormous quantities), as soon as our country is open to commerce, are textile fabrics, whether of wool, cotton, or flax; iron and steel, and articles manufactured therefrom in all their varieties; leather and manufactures of leather, such as shoes, boots, saddlery, harness, &c.; clothing of all kinds; glass; crockery; the products of the vine, whether wines, brandies, or liqueurs; silk and all fabrics of silk; hats, caps, &c.; the large class of commodities known as "articles de Paris;" the "comestibles" of France, including not only preserved meats, game, and fish, but fruits, vegetables, confectionery, and sweetmeats; salt; drugs; chemicals; stationery; manufactures of brass, lead, pewter, tin; together with an innumerable variety of other articles of less importance."-Mr. Benjamin to Mr. Mason, 11th December, 1862. (This was a despatch written with a view to its being communicated to Earl Russell.)

from thence to Cuba. Even after the season for the Chap. XII. export of cotton had arrived, the ships engaged in the trade under the British flag were at first few.1 British merchants entered it, and British capital flowed into it, by degrees. Cargoes were now despatched on the joint account of several speculators, each taking his share of profit and loss; or a vessel carried out at a high rate of freight the separate ventures of a number of individual shippers. The outward cargoes were commonly of a most miscellaneous character, and consisted chiefly of such articles of personal and domestic use as were likely to fetch a high price in the South; the return cargoes were almost exclusively cotton, compressed by mechanical contrivances into the smallest possible bulk. The ships bound on these voyages were never advertised, nor was their destination publicly made known, and it is impossible to form anything like an estimate of the extent to which the traffic was really carried on, or the number of persons concerned in it. The frequent recurrence, however, of the same names in connection with it, points to the conclusion that the bulk of it was at all times in a few hands, and that the chief agents were persons who had been interested, before the war, in Southern trade. Of twenty steamers which are said to have been kept plying in 1863 between Nassau and two of the blockaded ports, seven belonged to a mercantile firm at Charleston who had a branch house at Liverpool, and through whom the Confederate Government transacted its business in England.

The extension of blockade-running was evidently

1 In the list, furnished by Mr. Mason, of vessels entered and cleared at the port of Charleston from 1st October, 1861, to the end of March 1862, 12 are entered as sailing under the British flag, and 65 under that of the Confederacy.

2 The name of the Charleston firm was John Fraser & Co.;" that of the Liverpool house "Fraser, Trenholm & Co." Of the five members of the house four, I believe, were South Carolinians and one a British subject.

U

290 CAUSES WHICH PROMOTED BLOCKADE-RUNNING.

Chap. XII. due to two causes-the large profit which it offered to the bold and fortunate adventurer, and the imperfect effectiveness of the blockade itself. The former may be measured by the prices paid for cotton at Liverpool and for manufactured goods at Charleston; whilst the fact that three or four steamers a week in the cotton season made the voyage between the Southern coast and Nassau would be enough to prove the latter.1 The Federal and Confederate Governments, in the representations which they addressed to Great Britain from opposite sides and for diametrically opposite purposes, were more or less embarrassed by the combination of these two circumstances, neither of which could be denied, and on both of which, indeed, they both laid stress. The United States, affirming that the blockade was effective, complained in the same breath that it was constantly broken; the Confederates, whilst they declared that it was ineffective and ought not to be respected, enlarged upon the straits to which their country was reduced by the exclusion of all foreign goods, and on the enormous profits which might be secured by Great Britain, could she determine to open the trade by force and pour in a supply. The truth is, that it was quite

1 This seems to have been the case during the first five months of 1863. "Of seven steamers which the Undersigned alone has kept plying on the sea between said ports, and which have performed no less than thirty-two round voyages within these twelve months just elapsed, aggregating a return cargo of over 21,000 bales of cotton, not one has ever been stopped in her trade, or in any manner impeded in her progress, by the interference of the blockading force; all of them have carried out successfully their adventure, with the exception of the Kate and the Stonewall Jackson, which were lost by mere accident, the one as she ascended the river near Wilmington, and the other by being stranded on the bar at Charleston. Among the said steamers was peculiarly distinguishable the Margaret and Jessie for the precision and steadiness of her voyages, having performed, in less than five months, five complete trips, with a full return cargo of cotton to Nassau, aggregating 3,714 bales, as may be seen by the sworn declaration of J. B. Lafitte, and the certified statement of the Custom-house Collector at this port hereto annexed."—Mr. Trenholm to Governor Bayley, 3rd July, 1863.