In the judgment of the intelligent and patriotic
people of the South the war was practically over. Why should they swell
the ranks of great armies to augment the power of military lords?
While these comfortable doctrines were being proclaimed in the South,
the North was drilling five hundred thousand soldiers who had enlisted
for three years.
The soreheads, theorists, and chronic kickers now had their supreme
opportunity to harass the President. They rallied behind the sulking
General and his friends and established a vigilant and malignant
opposition to Jefferson Davis in the Confederate Congress.
They centered their criticism naturally on the weakest spot in the new
Government--the weakest spot in all new nations--its financial policy.
They demanded the immediate purchase of all the cotton in the South and
its exportation to England as a basis of credit. They blithely ignored
two facts--that the Government had no money with which to purchase this
enormous quantity of the property of its people and the still more
important fact that the ports of the South had been blockaded, that this
blockade was becoming more and more effective and that blockade-runners
could not be found with sufficient tonnage to move one-tenth of the crop
if they were willing to risk capture and confiscation.
Pages:
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277