the enterprise of private parties, and by this department, through agencies of its own Of this number it is estimated that about 300,000 hogs, in their bacon equivalent, have been consumed by our State and Confederate armies since the commencement of hostili ties. This was for a period of eight months, and shows a requirement of 450,000 hogs per annum. For a considerable part of that period the army was a mere fraction of the magnitude which it has since reached. Those who think that the stimulus of high prices, under the apprehension of a great scarcity, has so increased our supply of meat as to enable us to dispense with this large balance, forget that the counties most capable of such development are precisely those which have suffered most from the war. Elsewhere it must have been a new enterprise, such as could not be expected to succeed when the best men were in the army.

"Therefore I urge that supplies be engaged both from Memphis and from the vicinity of New Orleans, and for these additional reasons: It may be safely estimated that the army will consume and waste the product of not less than five hundred thousand hogs, of which we calculate to receive only about one third from our Confederate limits. I will not be prudent to rely upon obtaining the amount needed from one single source of supply; it will be well to divide the risk. Moreover, other articles are needed nearly as much as meat. The salt works in Louisiana are not to be depended on; the supply to be obtained from Saltville, in Virginia, is limited. The wants of citizens, daily becoming more urgent and alarming, will absorb all of that, if permitted, and the drafts of the Government upon the same fund will cause ruinous prices and great destitution.

"One reliable party in New Orleans offers to supply one hundred thousand sacks of salt, or more than is called for by the rapidly expiring contract at Saltville. Other articles-such as coffee and flour-are also offered from New Orleans. The supply of flour from that quarter will enable the soldiers from the Southwest to use that in part as a bread ration instead of corn meal, which must otherwise be their sole reliance for bread The reserve of coffee for the sick is being rapidly consumed. No other prospect of get. ting more presents itself, but the necessity of a sufficiency is important. The success of the enterprise is doubtful; but the opportunity afforded by the venality of the enemy ought not to be lost. If we thereby obtain the use of the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans, until such time as the whole or a large part of the needed supplies shall have been obtained, it will be a great benefit.

"Its effect upon the morale of the enemy, and the political results of such a policy, however important in themselves, are questions which, as they have not entered into my calculations, I do not discuss. My action proceeds entirely from a sense of the absolute necessity of these supplies to feed the army, and to subdue the want which has already manifested itself both in Gen. Lee's army and the Army of the West, under the privations to which they have been subjected. Respectfully,

"L. B. NORTHROP."

No official reply was ever received to this communication. Indeed about this time President Davis left Richmond on a visit to Mississippi, and in a speech before the Legislature of that State pronounced the solemn opinion that the war would soon come to an end. For this reason and on political principles " the policy of using cotton to get supplies through the lines, and taking advantage of the wide-spread venality of the enemy was negatived. The arguments against this trade were specious and trifling. It was said that the Federal finances were in such a condition

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that if they could not obtain cotton, upon which to draw bills wherewith to pay their then accruing January interest, their credit would explode, and the war would speedily cease from the bankrupting of our assailants. Hence they wanted cotton. It was also asserted that they did not want cotton, but only sought, under cover of a contract for supply, to find out the channels of navigable streams, to ascertain the location and condition of certain defences, and otherwise to spy out the land. A third argument was that the trade on the part of the government would demoralize the people among whom it might be conducted; and the newspapers added that to trade through New Orleans and let cotton clear from that port "would make Europe think we had caved, who thereupon would decline to recognize us or to intervene." Such were the fancies and punctilios which persuaded the Confederate Government to persist in a line of policy, the steady and inevitable tendency of which was to bring its armies to the verge of starvation.

The project of getting supplies through the enemy's lines thus discouraged, it was necessary for the Commissary General to cast about for a new resource; and in 1863 the experiment was first attempted of obtaining supplies, especially meat and coffee, from foreign ports through the blockade. A scheme of contract was prepared on the basis of an association of individual enterprise with government capital, which, it was thought, if properly arranged, would combine the power and money of the one with the energy and skill of the other. Especially in a business as hazardous as blockade running would such an association, it was thought, be an advantage as securing to the individuals the insurance of many ventures, and to the government the vigilance and intelligence of private parties. It was contemplated that the private parties should sell the cotton and purchase the return cargo, charging two and a half per cent. commission on each transaction; and that the government should purchase the cotton on this side at a commission of two and a half per cent., with a reserved right to the government to all the private freight room, when claimed at an agreed rate per ton; which was two-thirds less than had been previously demanded by other blockade runners, and paid by the government.

Here again was the story of gross mismanagement and slip-shod administration on the part of the Confederate authorities. Great quantities of meat were left to rot at Nassau and Bermuda; payments were not promptly made; and the new resource that had promised such grand results dwindled into insignificant numbers. Contracts for supplies, payable in cotton, in our Atlantic ports, were made with several parties; but in no instance with success. Either the amount involved was too small to tempt the venality of those who could control or purchase an evasion of the blockade, or the engagement to deliver meat alone was found to be too small an inducement to those engaged in blockade running.

In consequence of these failures, and of the refusal to be allowed to pur chase on the Mississippi, the army, especially in Virginia, was put upon short rations. First, they were reduced to one half pound of meat per day -which, if it could have been kept up at that, would have been sufficient --then to one-third of a pound-though this allowance was not agreed to or adhered to by several of the Generals commanding—and then to one quarter of a pound. Upon this last allowance the Army of Northern Virginia wintered.

The policy of running the blockade, so far as the government was interested in it for subsistence, was the occasion of odious monopolies, violations of contract, misunderstandings, &c., and proved of little advantage to the government, and of questionable profit to private parties. What was known as the Crenshaw or Collie line of steamers did not start until the spring of 1864, and then under unfavourable auspices. One steamer was lost on the coast of Ireland, in coming out; another upon her second trip; but two others, both very superiour steamers, were put upon the line, one or both of which had been paid for by large advances made by Crenshaw & Co., and were running successfully. Under their contract the government was obliged to furnish the whole cargo of cotton for each vessel, but, having failed to do so, and the private parties having been required, against the terms of the contract, to supply their own cotton te the vessel at market rates-a demand which was acceded to rather than raise the issue-it was determined to take other parties into the contract. This was rendered necessary by the inability of the government to transport the cotton, and by the inability of the private parties to supplement the government deficiencies in that particular. The government was accordingly induced by the private parties to sell one-fourth of its three-fourths interest in the steamers to the Supply Importing Company, composed of various railroad companies and others interested in railroads in the South. This though the terms of the contract were changed, and the parties became, as was contended by the government, mere carriers, whereby the subsistence department lost the benefit of the arrangement it had proposed -at once obviated the difficulties about transporting cotton; and, as this new contract provided for twelve steamers, it was hoped that some good results might be at last reached. But just as this business had got well under way, the government decided upon taking the Atalanta, the best of the steamers referred to above, for a cruiser. It was urged, in opposition to this, that the tested speed and capacity of this vessel had induced the private parties interested to enter into large contracts for vessels in England, and to assume heavy obligations to pay for the government interest in them; that there were large quantities of subsistence stores at the Islands, purchased by Crenshaw & Co. for the commissariat, which were much needed by the army, and might spoil if permitted to remain. But

THE IMPRESSMENT LAWS.

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the government insisted upon taking the ship. Other vessels were built, and paid for by the credit of the private parties, and by receipts of cotton from those successively put on the line; and the enterprise went on, but with results far below the necessities of the country.

During the whole period of the efforts to put the question of meat supply from abroad upon what the bureau of subsistence deemed a proper footing, the meat in the limits of the Confederacy was being constantly reduced in amount, though under constantly increasing efforts to get it for

the army.

The well-known effects of a depreciating currency in causing supplies to be hoarded, rendered it necessary to impress them. This mode was legalized by acts of Congress, which failed, however, to enforce it by any penalty, and rendered it nugatory in many instances by requiring that in all cases the impressment should be accompanied by a proffer of the money. In some States the feeling against it had rendered it almost inoperative, and the judiciary, gubernatorial or legislative action of several had practically nullified the law. As a substitute, to last until the currency could have been amended, it might have answered; but experience showed that, as a permanent system, it would be resisted and evaded to such an extent as to render it of little avail in drawing ont a sufficiency, when to furnish it even for the army was to produce privation at home. Under the rapid depreciation of our currency, which was now thought by many to have reached a point of hopeless bankruptcy, and when the prices under the schedule fixed by the Commissioners of Appraisement in the various States were merely nominal, it was regarded by the people as an unjust and tyrannical tax, to be resisted to the point of compelling its abandonment as a mode of supply.

It will thus be seen, on a general survey of the whole subsistence policy of the Confederate government-its practical rejection of trade with the enemy, its feeble and mismanaged efforts in running the blockade, and the small yield of impressments-that there could be but one result and that a constant diminution of supplies to the point of starvation. It was a policy of blunders; it lacked some steady and deliberate system; and it finally, as we shall see, in the close of the year 1864, got to that point where the whole system of Confederate defence was bound to break down by the want of subsistence, even without a catastrophe of arms!

It is astonishing what silly devices were hit upon in Richmond to meet the coming necessity, and how the empirical remedies of shallow brains aggravated the disorder. One of these so-called remedies proved one of the vilest curses that was ever fastened upon the Confederacy. On the 6th November, 1863, an order was issued by the Secretary of War, that no supplies held by a party for his own consumption, or that of his eınployés or slaves, should be impressed, and that "no officer should at any

time, unless specially ordered so to do by a general Commanding, in a case of exigency, impress supplies which were on their way to market for sale on arrival."

The construction given to that order filled the land with purchasersprivate individuals, railroad companies, manufacturers of all kinds, corporations of every class, relief associations of cities, towns and counties, were personally or by their agents in the market buying a year's supply, unlimited as to price, and protected from impressment. Speculators, whose purchases were generally in transitu, found themselves protected, and the government playing into their hands. The sudden influx of purchasers into the market stimulated the cupidity of producers and holders of the neces saries of life, and induced them to withhold their supplies, under the expectation of higher prices, and actually raised the prices of all the prime articles fully one hundred per cent. within a single month. The purchasing officers of the government could not buy; nor was it reasonable to expect parties to sell to the government at schedule price, when double that price was offered at their doors by others. They could not impress, for holders had, with great promptness, contracted for all their supplies to parties who paid them higher prices, and thus it naturally and surely happened that the regular supplies of the government were cut off. The whole land was infected by speculators pampered by Mr. Seddon, the Secretary of War; and the soldier, who was without shelter fighting our battles, found himself discriminated against in favour of the private citizen-who, with a roof above him, could better stand a short allowance of food,-and put at the mercy of the most heartless and hateful speculators, who had no conception of the war beyond that of dollars and cents.

It has been remarked that the shiftlessness of the people of the South, their want of commercial tact or of business knowledge, so to speak, however it might have been doubted before, was fully proved in the war, and that this cause, as much as anything else, contributed to the ruin and prostration of the Confederacy. The unbusiness-like mind of the South was well illustrated in its commissariat; and the mismanagement of this bureau confirms the truth of the general observation. It is curious, indeed, how this observation extends to all the affairs of the Confederacy. There was a stock of childish expedients in times of grave distress in the Confederacy, at which the world was rather disposed to laugh, despite the necessities they indicated. When iron became scarce, an association of ladies was formed to advertise an appeal all through the Confederacy for broken pots and pans with which to build an armoured steamer. When the Confederate finances declined, it was proposed by a foolish woman of Mobile, who had probably never heard of the law of supply and demand, that all of her sex in the Confederacy should be shorn, and each head of hair bringing a certain price in the European markets, to realize thus many millions