It had been
done under conditions of incredible difficulty, but it had been done.
The smashing of McClellan's army brought to the North the painful
realization of this fact. Abraham Lincoln must call for another half
million soldiers and no man could foresee the end.
Davis had begun in April, 1861, without an arsenal, laboratory or powder
mill of any capacity, and with no foundry or rolling mill for iron
except the little Tredegar works in Richmond.
He had supplied them.
Harassed by an army of half a million men in blue led by able generals
and throttled by a cable of steel which the navy had drawn about his
coast line, he had done this work and at the same time held his own
defiantly and successfully. Crippled by a depreciated currency,
assaulted daily by a powerful conspiracy of sore-head politicians and
quarreling generals, strangled by a blockade that deprived him of nearly
all means of foreign aid--he had still succeeded in raising the needed
money. Unable to use the labor of slaves except in the unskilled work of
farms, hampered by lack of transportation even of food for the army,
with no stock of war material on hand,--steel, copper, leather or iron
with which to build his establishments--yet with quiet persistence he
set himself to solve these problems and succeeded.
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