THE CHINESE-WALL BLOCKADE, ABROAD AND AT HOME.
Potent factor in sapping the foundations of Confederate hope and of
Confederate credit, was the blockade.
First held in contempt; later fruitful mother of errors, as to the
movements and intentions of European powers; ever the growing
constrictor--whose coil was slowly, but surely, to crush out life--it
became each year harder to bear:--at last unbearable!
At first, Mr. Lincoln's proclamation was laughed to scorn at the South.
The vast extent of South Atlantic and Gulf coast--pierced with
innumerable safe harbors--seemed to defy any scheme for hermetic
sealing. The limited Federal navy was powerless to do more than keep
loose watch over ports of a few large cities; and, if these were even
effectually closed, it was felt that new ones would open, on every
hand, inviting the ventures of enterprising sailors.
This reasoning had good basis, at first; and--had the South made prompt
and efficient use of opportunity and resources at hand, by placing
credits abroad and running in essential supplies--the result of the
first year's blockade might largely have nullified its effect, for the
last three. But there seemed indurated contempt for the safety-bearing
look ahead; and its very inefficiency, at the outset, of the blockade
lulled the South into false security.
The preceding pages note the rapid and vast growth of the Union navy;
but the South misjudged--until error had proved fatal--that enterprise
and "grit" of Yankee character; that fixed steadiness of purpose which
forced both, ever, into most resultful effort. And, so gradual were
appreciable results of this naval growth; so nearly imperceptible was
the actual closing of southern ports--that the masses of the people
realized no real evil, until it had long been accomplished fact.
Already record has been made of the urgence on Government of sending
cotton abroad, and importing arms, munitions and clothing, which
ordinary foresight declared so needful. But--only when the proper
moment had long passed--was the then doubtful experiment made.
A twin delusion to the kingship of cotton besotted the leaders as to
the blockade. Arguing its illegality equal to its inefficiency, they
were convinced that either could be demonstrated to Europe. And here
let us glance briefly at the South's suicidal foreign policy; and at
the feeling of other people regarding it.
Under the Treaty of Paris, no blockade was _de facto_, or to be
recognized, unless it was demonstrated to be effectual closing of the
port, or ports, named. Now, in the South, were one or two ships, at
most, before the largest ports; with an average of one vessel for every
hundred miles of coast! And so inefficient was the early blockade of
Charleston, Wilmington and New Orleans, that traders ran in and out,
actually with greater frequency than before those ports were proclaimed
closed. Their Government declared--and the southern people believed--that
such nominal blockade would not be respected by European powers; and
reliant upon the kingship of cotton inducing early recognition, both
believed that the ships of England and France--disregarding the impotent
paper closure--would soon crowd southern wharves and exchange the royal
fleece for the luxuries, no less than the necessaries, of life.
When the three first commissioners to Europe--Messrs. Yancey, Rost and
Mann--sailed from New Orleans, on March 31, '61, their mission was
hailed as harbinger to speedy fruition of these delusive thoughts, to
which the wish alone was father. Then--though very gradually--began
belief that they had reckoned too fast; and doubt began to chill
glowing hopes of immediate recognition from Europe. But there was none,
as yet, relative to her ultimate action. The successful trial trip of
the "Nashville," Captain Pegram, C.S.N.--and her warm reception by
the British press and people--prevented that. And, after every victory
of the South, her newspapers were filled with praise from the press of
England. But gradually--as recognition did not come--first wonder, then
doubt, and finally despair took the place of certainty.
When Mr. Yancey came back, in disgust, and made his plain statement of
the true state of foreign sentiment, he carried public opinion to his
side; and--while the Government could then do nothing but persist in
effort for recognition, now so vital--the people felt that dignity was
uselessly compromised, while their powerless representatives were kept
abroad, to knock weakly at the back door of foreign intervention.
Slight reaction came, when Mason and Slidell were captured on the high
seas, under a foreign flag. Mr. Seward so boldly defied the rampant
Lion; Congress so promptly voted thanks to Captain Wilkes, for
violating international law; the Secretary of the Navy--after slyly
pulling down the blinds--so bravely patted him on the back--that the
South renewed her hope, in the seeming certainty of war between the two
countries. But she had calculated justly neither the power of
retraction in American policy, nor Secretary Seward's vast capacity for
eating his own words; and the rendition of her commissioners--with
their perfectly quiet landing upon British soil--was, at last, accepted
as sure token of how little they would accomplish. And, for over three
years, those commissioners blundered on in thick darkness--that might
not be felt; butting their heads against fixed policy at every turn;
snubbed by subordinates--to whom alone they had access; yet eating,
unsparingly and with seeming appetite, the bountiful banquet of cold
shoulder!
It is not supposable that the people of the South realized to the full
that humiliation, to which their State Department was subjecting them.
Occasionally Mr. Mason, seeing a gleam of something which might some
day be light, would send hopeful despatches; or before the hopeful eyes
of Mr. Slidell, would rise roseate clouds of promise, light with
bubbles of aid--intervention--recognition! Strangely enough, these
would never burst until just after their description; and the secretary
fostered the widest latitude in press-rumors thereanent, but deemed it
politic to forget contradiction, when--as was invariably the case--the
next blockade-runner brought flat denial of all that its precedent had
carried.
Still, constant promises with no fulfillment, added to limited private
correspondence with foreign capitals, begat mistrust in elusive
theories, which was rudely changed to simple certainty.
Edwin DeLeon had been sent by Mr. Davis on a special mission to London
and Paris, after Mr. Yancey's return; his action to be independent of
the regularly established futility. In August, 1863, full despatches
from him, to the southern President and State Department, were captured
and published in the New York papers. These came through the lines and
gave the southern people the full and clear expose of the foreign
question, as it had long been fully and clearly known to their
government.
This publication intensified what had been vague opposition to further
retention abroad of the commissioners. The people felt that their
national honor was compromised; and, moreover, they now realized that
Europe had--and would have--but one policy regarding the Confederacy.
Diplomatically regarded, the position of the South was actually
unprecedented. Europe felt the delicacy--and equally the danger--of
interference in a family quarrel, which neither her theories nor her
experience had taught her to comprehend. Naturally jealous of the
growing power of the American Union, Europe may, moreover, have heard
dictates of the policy of letting it exhaust itself, in this internal
feud; of waiting until both sides--weakened, wearied and worn
out--should draw off from the struggle and make intervention more
nominal than needful. This view of "strict neutrality"--openly vaunted
only to be practically violated--takes color from the fact of her
permitting each side to hammer away at the other for four years,
without one word even of protest!
Southern prejudice ever inclined more favorably toward France than
England; the scale tilting, perhaps, by weight of Franco-Latin
influence among the people, perhaps by belief in the suggested theories
of the third Napoleon. Therefore, intimations of French recognition
were always more welcomed than false rumors about English aid.
In the North also prevailed an idea that France might intervene--or
even recognize the Confederacy--before colder England; but that did not
cause impartial Jonathan to exhibit less bitter, or unreasoning, hatred
of John Bull. Yet, as a practical fact, the alleged neutrality of the
latter was far more operative against the South than the North.
For--omitting early recognition of a blockade, invalid under the Treaty
of Paris--England denied _both_ belligerent navies the right to
refit--or bring in prizes--at her ports. Now, as the United States had
open ports and needed no such grace, while the South having no commerce
thus afforded no prizes--every point of this decision was against her.
Equally favoring the North was the winking at recruiting; for, if men
were not actually enlisted on British soil and under that flag,
thousands of "emigrants"--males only; with expenses and bounty paid by
United States recruiting agents--were poured out of British territory
each month.
When France sent her circular to England and Russia, suggesting that
the time had come for mediation, the former summarily rejected the
proposition. Besides, England's treatment of the southern commissioners
was coldly neglectful; and--from the beginning to the end of the
Confederacy, the sole aid she received from England was personal
sympathy in isolated instances. But British contractors and traders had
tacit governmental permission to build ships for the rebels, or to sell
them arms and supplies, at their own risks. And, spite of these
well-known facts, northern buncombe never tired of assailing "the rebel
sympathies" of England!
With somewhat of race sympathy between the two peoples, the French
emperor's movements to feel the pulse of Europe, from time to time, on
the question of mediation, kept up the popular delusion at the South.
This was shared, to a certain extent, even by her government; and Mr.
Slidell's highly-colored despatches would refan the embers of hope into
a glow. But while Napoleon, the Little, may have had the subtlest head
in Europe, he doubtless had the hardest; and the feeble handling by the
southern commissioner, of that edged-tool, diplomacy, could have
aroused only amusement in those subordinate officials, whom alone he
reached.
The real policy of France was doubtless, from the beginning, as fixed
as was that of England; and though she may have hesitated, for a time,
at the tempting bait offered--monopoly of southern cotton and
tobacco--the reasons coercing that policy were too strong to let her
swallow it at last.
For the rest, Russia had always openly sympathized with the North; and
other European nations had very vague notions of the merits of the
struggle; less interest in its termination; and least of all, sympathy
with what to them was mere rebellion.
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 expose of Mr. Yancey, the few sturdy truths Mr. Mason
later told; and the detailed resume 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.
Could these life-needs the South was compelled to create within, have
been procured from without, they had not alone been far less costly in
time, labor and money--but the many hands called from work equally as
vital had not then been diverted from it. The South was self-supporting,
as the hibernator that crawls into a stump to subsist upon its own fat.
But that stump is not sealed up, and Bruin--who goes to bed in autumn,
sleek and round, to come out a skeleton at springtime--quickly
reproduces lost tissue. With the South, material once consumed was gone
forever; and the drain upon her people--material--mental--moral--was
permanent and fatal.
One reason why the result of the blockade--after it became actually
effective--was not earlier realized generally at the South, was that
private speculation promptly utilized opportunities, which the
Government had neglected. What appeared huge overstock of clothing and
other prime necessities had been "run in," while there was yet time;
and before they had advanced in price, under quick depreciation of
paper money. Then profits doubled so rapidly that--spite of their
enhanced risk from more effective blockade--private ventures, and even
great companies formed for the purpose, made "blockade-breaking" the
royal road to riches. Almost every conceivable article of merchandise
came to southern ports; often in quantities apparently sufficient to
glut the market--almost always of inferior quality and manufactured
specially for the great, but cheap, trade now sprung up.
Earlier ventures were content with profit of one, or two hundred per
cent.; calculating thus for a ship and cargo, occasionally captured.
But as such risk increased and Confederate money depreciated,
percentage on blockade ventures ran up in compound ratio; and it became
no unusual thing for a successful investment to realize from fifteen
hundred to two thousand per cent. on its first cost.
Still, even this profit as against the average of loss--perhaps two
cargoes out of five--together with the uncertain value of paper money,
left the trade hazardous. Only great capital, ready to renew promptly
every loss, could supply the demand--heretofore shown to have grown
morbid, under lost faith in governmental credit. Hence sprung the great
blockade-breaking corporations, like the Bee Company, Collie & Co., or
Fraser, Trenholm & Co. With capital and credit unlimited; with branches
at every point of purchase, reshipment and entry; with constantly
growing orders from the departments--these giant concerns could control
the market and make their own terms.
Their growing power soon became quasi dictation to Government itself;
the national power was filtered through these alien arteries; and the
South became the victim--its Treasury the mere catspaw--of the selfsame
system, which clear sight and medium ability could so easily have
averted from the beginning!
Even when pressure for supplies was most dire and Government had become
almost wholly dependent for them upon the monopoly octopus--it would
not move. Deaf to urgent appeals of its trusted officers, to establish
a system of light, swift blockade-runners, the Department admitted
their practical necessity, by entering into a limited partnership with
a blockade-breaking firm. And, it must go without saying that the
bargain driven was like the boy's: "You and I will each take half and
the rest we'll give to Anne!"
As noted, in considering finance, the mania for exchanging paper money
for something that could be enjoyed, grew apace as the war progressed.
Fancy articles for dress, table luxuries and frippery of all sorts came
now into great demand. Their importation increased to such bulk as, at
last, to exclude the more necessary parts of most cargoes; and not less
to threaten complete demoralization of such minority as made any money.
It may seem a grim joke;--the starving, tattered--moribund Confederacy
passing sumptuary laws, as had Venice in her recklessness of riches!
But, in 1864, a law was necessitated against importation of all
articles, not of utility; forbidden luxuries being named per schedule.
That its constant evasion--if not its open defiance--was very simple,
may be understood; for the blockade firms had now become a power
coequal with Government, and exceptions were listed, sufficient to
become the rule.
And so the leeches waxed fat and flourished on the very life-blood of
the cause, that represented to them--opportunity! And, whatever has
been said of speculators at Richmond, they were far less culpable than
these, their chiefs; for, without the arch-priests of greed,
speculation would have died from inanition. The speculators were most
hungry kites; but their maws were crammed by the great vultures that
sat at the coast, blinking ever out over the sea for fresh gains; with
never a backward glance at the gaunt, grim legions behind
them--naked--worn--famished, but unconquered still!
Transportation needs have been noted, also. No department was worse
neglected and mismanaged than that. The existence of the Virginia army
wholly depended on a single line, close to the coast and easily tapped.
Nor did Government's seizure of its control, in any manner remedy the
evil. Often and again, the troops around Richmond were without
beef--once for twelve days at a time; they were often without flour,
molasses or salt, living for days upon cornmeal alone! and the
ever-ready excuse was want of transportation!
Thousands of bushels of grain would ferment and rot at one station;
hundreds of barrels of meat stacked at another, while the army starved
because of "no transportation!" But who recalls the arrival of a
blockader at Charleston, Savannah, or Wilmington, when its ventures
were not exposed at the auctions of Richmond, in time unreasonably
short!
These facts are not recalled in carping spirit; nor to pronounce
judgment just where the blame for gross mismanagement, or favoritism
should lie. They are recorded because they are historic truth; because
the people, whom they oppressed and ruined--saw, felt and angrily
proclaimed them so; because the blockade mismanagement was
twin-destroyer with the finance, of the southern cause.
The once fair cities of Charleston, Savannah and Wilmington suffered
most from the blockade, both in destruction of property and
demoralization of their populations. The first--as "hot-bed of treason"
and equally from strategic importance--was early a point of Federal
desire; but the fleet had been compelled to stand idly by and witness
the bloodless reduction of Sumter. Later--when strengthened armaments
threatened constant attack--Lee and Beauregard had used every resource
to strengthen defenses of the still open port. What success they had,
is told by the tedious and persistent bombardment--perhaps unexampled
in the history of gunnery; surely so in devices to injure non-combatant
inhabitants.
On the 30th January, '63, the two slow, clumsy and badly-built rams,
under Captain Ingraham--of Martin Koszta fame--attacked the blockading
squadron and drove the Union flag completely from the harbor; but
re-enforced by iron-clads, it returned on the 7th of April. Again,
after a fierce battle with the fort, the Federal fleet drew off,
leaving the "Keokuk" monitor sunk; only to concentrate troops and build
heavy batteries, for persistent attempt to reduce the devoted city. The
history of that stubborn siege and defense, more stubborn still; of the
woman-shelling "swamp-angel" and the "Greek-fire;" of the deeds of
prowess that gleamed from the crumbling walls of Charleston--all this
is too familiar for repetition. Yet, ever and again--through wooden
mesh of the blockade-net and its iron links, alike--slipped a fleet,
arrowy little blockader into port. And with what result has just been
seen!
Wilmington--from long and shoal approach to her proper port--was more
difficult still to seal up effectually. There--long after every other
port was closed--the desperate, but wary, sea-pigeon would evade the
big and surly watcher on the coast. Light draught, narrow, low in the
water, swift and painted black--these little steamers were commanded by
men who knew every inch of coast; who knew equally that on them
depended life and death--or more. With banked fires and scarce-turning
wheels, they would drop down the Cape Fear, at night, to within a
hundred yards of the looming blockade giant. Then, putting on all
steam, they would rush by him, trusting to speed and surprise to elude
pursuit and distract his aim--and ho! for the open sea.
This was a service of keen excitement and constant danger; demanding
clear heads and iron nerves. Both were forthcoming, especially from
navy volunteers; and many were "the hair-breadth 'scapes" that made the
names of Maffit, Wilkinson and their confreres, household words among
the rough sea-dogs of Wilmington.
Savannah suffered least of the fair Atlantic sisterhood, from the
blockade. The early capture of her river forts blocked access to her
wharves, almost effectually; though occasional steamers still slipped
up to them. Yet, she was in such easy reach of her more open neighbors,
as to reap part of the bad fruits with which they were so over-stocked.
These proud southern cities had ever been famed throughout the land,
for purity, high tone and unyielding pride. At the first bugle-blast,
their men had sprung to arms with one accord; and the best blood of
Georgia and the Carolinas was poured out from Munson's Hill to
Chickamauga. Their devoted women pinched themselves and stripped their
homes, to aid the cause so sacred to them; and on the burning
sand-hills of Charleston harbor, grandsire and grandson wrought side by
side under blistering sun and galling fire alike!
How bitter, then, for those devoted and mourning cities to see their
sacred places made mere marts; their cherished fame jeopardied by refuse
stay-at-homes, or transient aliens; while vile speculation--ineffably
greedy, when not boldly dishonest--smirched them with lowest vices of the
lust for gain! Shot-riddled Charleston--exposed and devastated--invited
nothing beyond the sterner business of money-getting. There, was
offered neither the leisure nor safety for that growth of luxury and
riotous living, which at one time possessed Wilmington.
Into that blockade mart would enter four ships to one at any other
port; speculators of all grades and greediness flocked to meet them;
and money was poured into the once-quiet town by the million. And, with
tastes restricted elsewhere, these alien crowds reveled in foreign
delicacies, edibles and liquors, of which every cargo was largely made
up. The lowest attache of a blockade-runner became a man of mark and
lived in luxury; the people caught the infection and--where they could
not follow--envied the fearful example set by the establishments of the
"merchant princes."
Was it strange that the people of leaguered Richmond--that the worn
hero starving in the trench at Petersburg--came to execrate those
vampires fattening on their life-blood; came to regard the very name of
blockade-runner as a stench and the government that leagued with it as
a reproach? For strangely-colored exaggerations of luxury and license
were brought away by visitors near the centers of the only commerce
left. Well might the soul of the soldier--frying his scant ration of
moldy bacon and grieving over still more scant supply at his distant
home--wax wroth over stories of Southdown mutton, brought in ice from
England; of dinners where the _pates_ of Strasbourg and the fruits of
the East were washed down with rare Champagne.
Bitter, indeed, it seemed, that--while he crawled, footsore and faint,
to slake his thirst from the roadside pool--while the dear ones at home
kept in shivering life with cornbread--degenerate southerners and
foreign leeches reveled in luxury untold, from the very gain that
caused such privation!
This misuse of that blockade-running--which strongly handled had proved
such potent agency for good--bred infinite discontent in army and in
people alike. That misdirection--and its twin, mismanagement of
finance--aided to strangle prematurely the young giant they might have
nourished into strength;--
"And the spirit of murder worked in the very means of life!"
But the Chinese-wall blockade was tripartite; not confined to closing
of the ocean ports. Almost as damaging, in another regard, were the
occupation of New Orleans, and the final stoppage of communication with
the trans-Mississippi by the capture of Vicksburg.
The Heroic City had long been sole point of contact with the vast
productive tracts, beyond the great river. The story were twice-told of
a resistance--unequaled even by that at Charleston and beginning with
first Union access to the river, by way of New Orleans. But, in May,
'62, the combined fleets of Porter and Farragut from the South, and
Davis from the North, rained shot and shell into the coveted town for
six terrible weeks. Failing reduction, they withdrew on June 24th;
leaving her banners inscribed--_Vicksburg victrix!_
In May of the next year, another concentration was made on the "key of
the Mississippi;" General Grant marching his army one hundred and fifty
miles from its base, to get in rear of Vicksburg and cut off its
relief. The very audacity of this plan may blind the careless thinker
to its bad generalship; especially in view of the success that at last
crowned its projector's hammer-and-tongs style of tactics. His reckless
and ill-handled assaults upon the strong works at Vicksburg--so freely
criticised on his own side, by army and by press--were but preface of a
volume, so bloodily written to the end before Petersburg.
Under ordinary combinations, Johnston had found it easy to crush Grant
and prevent even his escape to the distant base behind him. But,
unhappily, Government would not re-enforce Johnston--even to the very
limited extent it might; and Mr. Davis promoted Pemberton to a
lieutenant-generalcy and sent him to Vicksburg. But this is no place to
discuss General Pemberton's abilities--his alleged disobedience of
orders--the disasters of Baker's creek and Big Black; or his shutting
up in Vicksburg, hopeless of relief from Johnston. Suffice it, the
dismal echo of falling Vicksburg supplemented the gloom after
Gettysburg; and the swift-following loss of Port Hudson completed the
blockade of the Mississippi; and made the trans-river territory a
foreign land!
The coast of Maine met the waters of the Ohio, at the mouth of the
Mississippi; and two sides of the blockade triangle were completed,
almost impervious even to rebel ingenuity and audacity. It needed but
careful guard over the third side--the inland border from river to
coast--to seal up the South hermetically, and perfect her isolation.
That perfection had long been attempted. Fleets of gunboats ploughed
the Potomac and all inland water-approaches to the southern frontier. A
shrewd detective system, ramifying from Washington, penetrated the
"disaffected" counties of Maryland; spying equally upon shore and
household. The borders of Tennessee and Kentucky were closely picketed;
and no means of cunning, or perseverance, were omitted to prevent the
passage of anything living, or useful, into the South. But none of this
availed against the untiring pluck and audacity of the inland
blockade-breakers. Daily the lines were forced, spies evaded, and bold
"Johnny Reb" passed back and forth, in almost guaranteed security.
Such ventures brought small supplies of much-needed medicines, surgical
instruments and necessaries for the sick. They brought northern
newspapers--and often despatches and cipher letters of immense value;
and they ever had tidings from home that made the heart of exiled
Marylander, or border statesman sing for joy, even amid the
night-watches of a winter camp.
Gradually this system of "running the bloc." systematized and received
governmental sanction. Regular corps of spies, letter-carriers and
small purchasing agents were organized and recognized by army
commanders. Naturally, these also made hay while the sun shone; coming
back never--whatever their mission--with empty hands. Shoes, cloth,
even arms--manufactured under the very noses of northern detectives
and, possibly, with their connivance--found ever-ready sale. The
runners became men of mark--many of them men of money; for, while this
branch never demoralized like its big rival on the coast, the service
of Government was cannily mixed with the service of Mammon.
Late in the war--when all ports were closed to its communication with
agents abroad, the Richmond Government perfected this spy system, in
connection with its signal corps. This service gave scope for tact,
fertility of resource and cool courage; it gave many a brave fellow,
familiar with both borders, relief from camp monotony, in the fresh
dangers through which he won a glimpse of home again; and it gave a
vast mass of crude, conflicting information, such as must come from
rumors collected by men in hiding. But its most singular and most
romantic aspect was the well-known fact, that many women essayed the
breaking of the border blockade. Almost all of them were successful;
more than one well nigh invaluable, for the information she brought,
sewed in her riding-habit, or coiled in her hair. Nor were these coarse
camp-women, or reckless adventurers. Belle Boyd's name became historic
as Moll Pitcher; but others are recalled--petted belles in the society
of Baltimore, Washington and Virginia summer resorts of yore--who rode
through night and peril alike, to carry tidings of cheer home and bring
back news that woman may best acquire. New York, Baltimore and
Washington to-day boast of three beautiful and gifted women, high in
their social ranks, who could--if they would--recite tales of lonely
race and perilous adventure, to raise the hair of the budding beaux
about them.
But it may be that the real benefits of "running the bloc." were
counterbalanced by inseparable evils. The enhancement of prices and
consequent depreciation of currency may not have felt this system
appreciably; but it tempted immigration of the adventurous and vicious
classes, while it presented the anomaly of a government trading on its
enemy's currency to depreciation of its own. For the trade demanded
greenbacks; and the Confederacy bought these--often the product of
illicit traffic--from the runners themselves, at from twenty to _one
thousand_ dollars C.S., for one U.S.!
Such is the brief, and necessarily imperfect, glance at the triple
blockade, which steadily aided the process of exhaustion and ruin at
the South. Such were its undeniable effects upon the Government and the
people. And that these, in part at least, might have been averted by
bold foresight and prompt action--while the blockade was yet but
paper--is equally undeniable!
With this, as with most salient features of that
bitter--gallant--enduring struggle for life; with it, as in most
mundane retrospects--the saddest memories must ever cluster about the
"might have been!"