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Confederate diplomacy.
[from the Sunday News, Charleston, S. C., July 17, 1904.]
The opposition our Representatives faced in
Europe.
He appears to think that the result
May have been different had the masterly statecraft of
the Hon. R. Barnwell Rhett been Adopted—The
Queen, Prince Albert, Palmerston.
Cobden and bright for the
North, and the negroes, while the Tories warmly approved the cause of the
South—The status of
France and the views of
Napoleon—Sharp criticism of
President Davis and his Cabinet.
Was it ever before that a nation at its birth was ready with a million young horsemen to ride across its borders as
Forrest and
Morgan and
Mosby rode, gathering arms and blankets and horses for wider range of unparalleled enterprise in the enemy's territory?
Was ever invaded nation firm in its foundations to drive back the million young horsemen from the farms of the
South!
When
Robert Barnwell Rhett in masterly statecraft, at the outset, would prepare compensatory treaty rights for the commercial powers of
Western Europe in Confederate ports, thus to hold them safe from hostile blockade; and when this measure of statecraft was refused by the Confederate government, the act of refusal became tantamount to the use of a policy of military defence of thousands of miles of Southern coast, impossible of success, yet a policy wherein the
Confederate soldier was shorn of his peculiar prowess in war and whereby an exhaustive draft was made upon the army for garrison forces.
The government of the
Confederacy lost no time in entering a a field of diplomacy of its own devising, a sentimental appeal to an unwilling world.
The
Confederate States made prompt advances for admission of the most refined free government that had ever
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lived into the family circle of hereditary monarchies, but it brought in its pure hands no temptation to the avarice of the old monarchies.
It appeared with long scroll of argument in its pure hands, going to prove to ancient kingdoms that the only hope for free institutions in
America lay in the length and safety of its own precious life.
That was all of Confederate diplomacy—all, from first to last, brief as the time.
The young slave republic, the offspring of a dismembered government at peace with all
Europe, and which, if let alone, would go, full sail, into the sphere of monarchial conditions—the young republic mounted the pedestal of natural right, and with the curl of virtuous scorn upon its lip challenged the monarchial world to turn from the spectacle if it could!
Four Ememies of the South.
Lord Palmerston, the
Whig premier of
England, an octogenarian, who had been a personal disciple of
Wilberforce in his youth and who had brought down to his present life and office the enthusiasm then inspired by the great emancipator, heard with a smile of incredulity the solemn plea of the
Confederacy at the Court of St. James.
John Bright and
Richard Cobden, the venerable premier's lieutenants, had hardly composed themselves from the exciting sympathy with which they had watched the campaign
Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency.
The
German Prince-Consort, too, Albert, was near to carry into the predicate of Confederate recognition the national German morbidity of hate against slavery.
Albert died soon, yet not before he had developed his stand for the side of the
United States in the
American conflict.
For years after her husband's death, the
Queen lived in a melancholy, and he would be a rash minister who should approach her Majesty with suggestion of variance with her dead husband's known policy.
The Queen follows Albert's prejudices.
It was not new or recently excited prejudice that the
Confederacy met at the Court of St. James.
The amiable
Victoria in her happiest years had been offended to hear the truth of the
Southern States.
She had retired from her household the chosen companion of her childhood, the constant associate of her domestic life and the favorite among her four maids of honor,
Miss Amelia Murray.
The tale so simple, now so ominous, had been long told to the
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world.
Miss Murray made a tour of the
United States, from North to South, accompanied alone by her English maid.
She came in the time of the
Kansas agitation and being informed in public affairs, wrote voluminously in private letters to friends in
England of party politics as she observed them in Congress and elsewhere.
She wrote critically of American society, its customs and the sectional lines that separated what was good North from what was good South.
Gradually approaching slave States, the tourist accepted proffered hospitality of the planters and visited plantations.
The tone of her original Wilberforcean prejudices began to moderate as information reached her mind of practical conditions concerning the
Southern plantation and its
African bondsmen.
The truly valuable letters of
Miss Murray were published.
The delightful literature proved an offence in the
Royal Court.
The revelation of truth on the
Southern plantations published from the household of the
Queen of
England whose government, directed by her husband, was even then engaged in vigorous efforts to put down the surviving slave trade in English bottoms with Spanish-American islanders and
Brazil, was bad politics.
Not only so, but the
Queen's government had a rule to enter upon no new treaty of amity and commerce which failed to commit the signatures alike to suppression of the African slave trade.
Miss Murray's published reports of Southern plantations were an unwelcome information and must needs suffer a positive royal repudiation in her dismissal from the semi-political post she had so long adorned.
The Southern Confederacy, nevertheless, had already taken the most advanced step open to it against an indefinite expansion of the institution of slavery.
The Secession Convention of
Alabama had led in the movement which culminated in a proviso of the
Federal Constitution forever forbidding the introduction of slaves into the
Confederacy from any foreign country whatsoever.
The Tories were with us.
But the Palmerston ministry resolved from the outset upon an unfriendly policy toward the Southern Confederacy.
The Tory party, dividing almost evenly with the
Whigs, met the ministry on the issue.
The
London Times earnestly supported the Tories and the
South.
At
Liverpool,
Manchester and in
London voluntary associations of the higher classes were formed to express in practical methods their sympathy with the
South.
Rich men offered money to army hospitals of the
Confederacy, competent writers
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published paragraphs and authors wrote bound volumes arguing for the
South, members of Parliament from their seats prodded the ministry for its shirking policy toward the
South.
The Tories were as much our friends as if they had been of us, on the land.
While the
Southern sympathizers in
England were thus busy in practical ways at home, they did not fail to approach
Napoleon III in their urgency of the
Southern cause.
The Emperor of
France was a willing listener.
He took up the cause of the
South through formal channels of diplomacy with
England.
He held interviews with English members of Parliament, committing himself to the most advanced suggestions of co-operation with their own Government for the recognition and support of the independence of the
Confederacy.
He urged them to force the
British ministry to favorable action.
Robert Barnwell Rhett, deputy from
South Carolina, had given the subject of Government for the
South the study of an acute and philosophic mind for more than the life of a generation.
He took his seat at
Montgomery well prepared with an outline of foreign policy for the young republic which he had done so much to make possible.
Mr. Rhett's suggestion was founded upon certain accomplished facts of daily experience in the relations of the commerce of the slave States to
European trade.
The export commerce of the slave States in raw material was the richest in the world.
The official report of the fiscal year ending June 30, 1859, gave the exports initiating in the slave States at $188,693,490 and the exports initiating in the free States at $5,281,091.
England was both the chief ocean carrier and the chief manufacturer of the main subject of Southern commerce, cotton.
The industries of
France were also largely involved in the carrying trade and the manufacture of Southern raw material.
The Rhett scheme.
Upon the demonstrated value of Southern commerce and the historical record of Southern civil and military character,
Rhett's object of a foreign diplomacy rested.
The
Rhett scheme was, to proceed without a moment's delay to assail the well-known antislavery prejudice and fanatacism of the Palmerston ministry on the moral aspect of Southern slavery with an irresistible temptation of treaty stipulation into the interest of English commerce and manufactures known to be generally controlled by Whigs and abolitionists.
The
Rhett scheme would pledge the trade of
England and
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France special advantages and privileges in Confederate ports; for example, a tariff rate for twenty years, not to exceed 20 per cent. ad valorem, and certain fixed port charges not to exceed the cost of maintenance.
It was not pretended that the suggestion of special and compensatory terms of commercial treaty in the premises was original.
On the contrary, the terms were recommended as proven by the treaties of the
United States with
France and
England in the revolution.
The policy of
Rhett was a practical confronting of an emergency; the refusal of his policy without a substitute in any degree was a sentiment without an apology.
Did the rejection of
Rhett's scheme of foreign alliance give promise of any uncommon exertion of vigor in the Confederate government within the limits of its own resources?
The inexplicable situation was laid open by the act of rejection, the diverting of the
Federal government of seceded States from control of the political school that had long resisted the invention.
Secessionists had called the government into existence upon an argument all their own;
Unionists immediately rose to the administration and held it firmly until the end. Perhaps an intrepid spirit for hazards revealed itself in the conduct of the men who had been 10th to the last moment to enter upon so daring an enterprise as the erection of the new republic.
It is enough to say the leading secessionists of 1860-61 lost control of the Confederate government at the outset.
If discernment was to be used, if opportunity was to be seized, if influence was to be reckoned on, the founders of the
Confederacy had no voice in the situation.
Whether the road to the
Confederacy was straight or devious, the one significant thing was, it led to the goal which the road builders were denied.
In the last months of his life,
John C. Calhoun, seeing the end of his own availability approaching, prophesied that the young
Senator from
Mississippi, then on crutches from the field of
Buena Vista, would be the master spirit in the ripening movement to confederate under one government the slave States.
Calhoun died in the belief that the
Senator intended his eloquent defence of the right of secession and his eloquent portrayal of the perils which beset the slave States should lead to the remedy of secession.
But the
President of the Southern Confederacy never approved the secession
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movement.
Mr. Davis was, perhaps never quite understood.
The hand of the Confederate government denied the predicate of preference to the men from whose brains and hearts the
Southern movement had been nourished into complete system.
In the years of opportunity from foreign diplomacy, the
Secretary of State was
Judah P. Benjamin, a Whig and Unionist in the period when tariffs and free trade were contending American theories; the
Secretary of War was
James A. Seddon, by whose order
General Johnston was retired from command, the second army in strength then destroyed, and
Seddon had been earnestly opposed to the formation of the
Confederacy long after
President Davis took the oath at
Montgomery; the
Secretary of the Treasury,
Christopher G. Memminger, was a lifelong and active opponent of the
Calhoun doctrine and he was put in office against the declared judgment of the
President that
Robert Toombs, secessionist, was the ablest financier among all American public men. It is not worth while to say these officers were all faithful; they were all failures.
The axiom remains unimpeached, that statecraft is the intellectual product of an ideal.
Without the ideal there is no statecraft.
Statecraft involving the efficiency of the
Confederate war office did not suggest
John A. Campbell for
Assistant Secretary of War, yet
Campbell held the place until the end in the face of his avowal to the
President that he had no sympathy with the motives of the
Confederacy.
(Letter of
Campbell to
Judge Curtis.) The
Senator from
Georgia,
Benjamin H. Hill, was notoriously the friend and counsellor of
Mr. Davis, yet within thirty days of the meeting of the Confederate Congress at
Montgomery,
Mr. Hill had denounced bitterly the
Southern movement.
There was never a day when he either expected or desired the
Confederacy to live. (
Life and Speeches of B. H. Hill, by his son.)
Neither text-page or index of the five octave volumes prepared by
Mr. Davis and his wife, purporting to relate the tale of the rise and fall of the
Confederacy and the parts acted by many persons, contains the name of
Robert Barnwell Rhett,
William L. Yancey,
Louis T. Wigfall and their associated secessionists.
The massive volumes leave a perfect hiatus between the lucid accounts of the incorporation of the States' rights principle in the
Federal system of the
United States and the application of the principle in the perfected
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Confederate government.
Who prepared the people through long years of public discussion, and what the motive of final action, the many books omit to tell.
We are denied the simplicity of facts, for the gratification of a patriotic desire to find the men and their motives who built a government which sought to live among the nations.
Yancey's fruitless mission.
In March, 1861, the
Confederate commissioners in
Europe,
Wm. L. Yancey,
President, and
F. A. Rost and
A. Dudley Mann,
Associate Commissioners, with their accomplished young
Secretary,
Mr. Fearn, of
Huntsville, Ala., sailed out of the port of
Charleston.
Orders were obeyed.
Mr. Yancey made Southern rights' speeches and all talked to the kind people who received them into their confidence, of the inherent virtue of the
Confederate cause.
Yancey had no confidence when he left home in his mission.
‘Don't go to
Europe, if you value your reputation,’ his frieuds warned him. Having exhausted the field of his instructions, he asked to be called home.
The request was reluctantly granted by his government.
He was too fluent a talker to be spared.
The others remained.
Mr. John M. Mason, long a distinguished
Senator from
Virginia, and
Mr. John Slidell, a native of New York, long a Senator from
Louisiana, were sent out to the Court of St. James and
St. Cloud respectively.
The two commissioners, their respective secretaries, and the family of
Mr. Slidell, passed uninterrupted through the blockade at
Charleston and at
Havana boarded her Britanic Majesty's mail ship
Trent, plying between
Vera Cruz, Mexico, and
Southampton.
Mr. Seward,
Secretary of State, had determined from the beginning of the war to bluff
England and alarm her ministry.
Among the first of his unrelaxing acts in this line was the capture of
Messrs. Mason and
Slidell under the
British flag on the high seas off the coast of
Cuba.
Seward held his finger firmly on the pulse of
Palmerston's timid government.
When the time came, he surrendered the commissioners to a British ship in the harbor of
Boston, and in February, 1862, they were landed at
Liverpool.
Early in February, 1862,
Mr. Mason delivered informally
Secretary Hunter's message to the
British ministry.
There was absolutely nothing in it beyond the stale argument
Yancey had left behind him, that secession was not revolution in the
American system, that
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the
Southern people were not in rebellion; that the success of the
South in the war was inevitable; that the
Southern people would never return to the
Union; that there were vast stores of cotton on the plantations, which an enterprising neutral could have for the asking.
In the retirement of his later years
President Davis recounted the success of the first commissioners, as he had anticipated success, in these words:
“Our efforts for recognition by
European powers, in 1861, served to make us better known, to awaken a kindly feeling in our favor, and cause a respectful regard for the effort we were making to maintain the independence of the States which
Great Britain had recognized and her people knew to be our birthright.”
（
Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol.
I, p. 469.) This, after contemplation in fact, comprehended the whole scheme of Confederate foreign diplomacy from first to last.
Tories Welcomed Mason.
The Tories of
England received
Commissioner Mason with open arms.
They flocked to his apartments to welcome him and to applaud his country.
They escorted him to a seat in the galleries of Parliament, that he might hear with his own ears how they prodded the ministry and shamed it. They carried him to their country homes to see their kennels and their stables and to look upon their balls.
‘They are the same people here as in old
Virginia,’ wrote
Mason to his wife.
The
Lord Mayor invited him to attend the grand annual dinner.
He was there called upon to speak and his speech was tumultuously applauded.
Commissioner Mason took up the question of blockade with the
English ministry, to the limited extent that the ministry would hear him.
England had insisted that the
Confederate States should informally accede to the
Paris Convention; and this Paris Convention had committed the powers that signed it to the proposition that: (1) Blockade by belligerents must be effective; (2) That blockade once raised, even for an hour, could not be restored without notice to neutrals.
The blockade inefficient.
Mr. Mason showed to the
British minister conclusively that in the second year of the war the blockade of the
Confederate ports was not effective; that a lively trade continually passed through the blockade, so called; that, for instance, 100 vessels and more had
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passed through the
Confederate ports laden with incoming and outgoing merchandise in the three months only of the winter of 1861-62.
The commissioner further showed the
British Secretary for foreign affairs that in lieu of a port blockade which it had failed ignominiously to maintain, the United States government had established a line of patrol ships at sea in front of the various Confederate ports, and that the captures of several neutral vessels, made in their attempts to trade with the
Confederacy, were actually captures made upon the high seas, and not in the harbors or within the
Confederate jurisdiction.
These, therefore, were unlawful prizes and were a direct insult and injury to neutral commerce.
Meantime
Commissioner Slidell was active in
Paris.
He persuaded
M. Thouvenal, the
French Secretary of Foreign Affairs, to obtain permission from the
Emperor for
Messrs. Lindsay and
Roebuck, members of the British Parliament, to see him in the interest of the
Confederacy.
The Emperor cheerfully received the visitors,
Mr. Slidell also being present.
The interview was prolonged at the
Emperor's insistence.
He authorized the Englishmen to prepare Parliament for any advanced movement in favor of the
South, even to a break up of the
Whig government that stood in the way, and he would promptly and effectively join it.
Mr. Lindsay explained at length to the
Emperor that the battle of the
United States was not really for the maintenance of a Union from which slavery should be eliminated, but for the maintenance of a Union which would abolish the revenue tariff and in lieu restore the Clay-American system, or protective duties for the benefit of the commerce and manufacturers of the
North.
He showed that as imports are paid for by exports, and as the imports of the
South were great and of the
North small, the
South really paid three-fourths of the
Federal revenues, only to be denied an equitable disbursement of the collection.
The Emperor admitted the probable correctness of
Mr. Lindsay's views, and reiterated his readiness to join
England in recognition of the
Confederacy at once and to sustain that proceeding at all cost.
‘Why not advance to that step alone, may I ask your Majesty?’
inquired
Lindsay.
‘Ah, what then becomes of my fleet off
Vera Cruz?’
was the reply.
While the commissioners were thus employed
Moncure D. Conway, a Virginian of extraordinary ability, who had in his youth gone North to enlist with
Garrison,
Phillips,
Mrs. Howe and the
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most radical of the abolitionists, advertised in
London that he would lecture in that city under the auspices of
Mr. John Bright, and that the object of his lecture was to give moral support to a party in the
United States that would rise up and coerce the
Lincoln administration, to stop the war, and concede the independence of the
Confederacy.
Conway sent
Commissioner Mason a ticket to his lecture.
The blockade twice broken.
Again and again the
Confederate Commissioners urged upon
England and
France the rights of their governments under the terms of the
Paris Convention.
It was shown that now in the third year of the alleged blockading,
Flag Officer Ingraham, of the Confederate navy, had attacked the blockading squadron off
Charleston, destroyed some of its vessels, and entirely dispersed the others from view.
The next winter, it may not be amiss at this place to say,
Captain Dixon and crew ran the submarine torpedo boat
Hunley, the first boat of the kind known to naval warfare, under the blockader
Housatonic, a powerful warship, off the harbor of
Charleston.
The
Housatonic and all on board, about 400 persons, went to the bottom, carrying the
Hunley with it. Every blockader, taking fright, fled, and the port was open for several days.
At the same season in which
Ingraham opened the port of
Charleston,
Semmes opened
Galveston.
But neither
England or
France enforced the terms of the
Paris Convention.
In the winter of 1862-63 the improvised navy of the
Confederacy destroyed eleven warships of the
United States, while the
Alabama and the
Sumter drove the merchant marine of the enemy off the high seas.
Pressing need for firearms.
Among those in high place, early impressed with the importance of foreign sympathy and trade, especially in the matter of procuring arms for the
Confederacy, was the first
Secretary of War,
General Leroy Pope Walker.
The
Secretary suffered a rare experience.
He was so beset by importunate captains of companies to receive their commands into the army that he found it essential to his personal comfort to reach his office in
Montgomery by the back way to avoid the importunities of the soldiers.
He made a requisition on his government for 150,000 foreign rifles, but was shut off with 25,000.
The government did nevertheless promptly select a purchasing agent, and ordered him to
Europe with full discretionary
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power to buy arms and army equipments.
The person selected was an old army officer, who had been detailed as drill master and commandant at the
University of
Alabama, a young man,
Captain Caleb Huse, of
Massachusetts.
Captain Huse was a graduate of
West Point, and a good soldier, but citizens and prudent soldiers thought
General Beauregard, with a competent staff, must have been a more serviceable officer to have sent abroad on so vital a responsibility.
As the sequel proved, when
General Joseph E. Johnston, soon after the
First Manassas, proposed to invade the
North as the necessary strategy of war,
President Davis assured him the War Department had not the arms needed.
The President said, with apparently deep feeling, that he had tried to get arms, but had failed, and he did not know when he could get them.
So about the same time, when
General Albert Sidney Johnston, had recruited and put in camp ten or twelve thousand volunteers for the Western army, the
Secretary of War ordered the camps broken np and the men returned home for want of arms.
In all that time, and for months after,
Capt. Huse was receiving only $250 or about that sum, a month from his Government to use in his duty, but having made known to friends of the
Confederacy in
London his urgent need,
Sir Isaac Campbell loaned him half a million dollars on his private account and his cargo of much needed arms sailed.
The Confederacy needed a currency and manufactured one.
Did the abortive effort fairly represent the opportunities of the government?
There was much of foreign sympathy rejected in the proceeding.
We shall see that ‘cotton’ bonds of the
Confederacy, marketed in
England and
France were almost 100 per cent. higher than the bonds of the
United States at the same period.
I well remember that
Vice-President Stephens in conversation remarked to me, in the war time, that the
Confederacy with a little more business tact in the finances, might establish ‘the strongest paper currency in the world,’ referring to the uses that might be made of credit, founded on cotton, by the Treasury Department.
‘Cotton obligations.’
The Confederate cruiser
Alabama, was built for the government at
Birkenhead, on the
Mersey, by a firm of
Laird, a member of Parliament, was a member.
The cost was $250,000 and the firm rejected offers from the
Secretary of the Navy, at
Washington, to
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build several war ships for the
United States.
They would have built others for the
Confederacy, because it paid good prices.
In September, 1862,
Commissioner Mason wrote to his government that twenty or twenty-five millions could be had for its uses for ‘cotton obligations.’
Now the income of the
United States, in 1860, was about $75,000,000 only.
At a single draft our government was able to command one-third that sum. ‘Cotton obligations’ of the government consisted in a simple pledge of honor to deliver so many pounds of lint, at a price named, at a convenient seaport within the
Confederate limits, within three calendar months after the arrival of peace.
So attractive to foreign money lenders were the ‘cotton obligations’ that
Mr. Erlanger, of the private banking firm of
Erlanger & Co.,
Paris, made his way through the blockade to
Richmond to urge the authorities there to sell large blocks of this character for gold delivered in
London.
Two hundred and fifty thousand ‘Union’ Hessians.
The Union States, pending these incidents of Confederate financiering, was selling bonds in
Germany and devoting the proceeds to bounties to German subjects to enter its army.
Approximately a quarter of a million stout Germans flocked to save the
Union upon their bounties.
At the same period the
United States had agents in
Ireland recruiting soldiers to come to the rescue of the
Union on promise that the scanty farm at home, crippled with tithings and landlords exactions, should be replaced with many fruitful American acres as a free gift.
Then, too, to fill out the quota of soldiers, school teachers and others of both sexes came from
New England to Southern rice and cotton plantations to recruit negro troops, and of these some 241,000 were armed and mustered into the ranks of the
Union army.
What the
United States bonds brought on the market in
Europe is immaterial.
They sold as low as 40 cents on the dollar in Wall street.
The South Borrows $15,000,000.
Under date ‘
Richmond, January 15, 1863,’
Secretary of State Benjamin wrote to
Commissioner Mason: ‘The agents of
Messrs. Erlanger & Co. arrived a few days before your dispatches and were quite surprised to find their proposals were considered inadmissible.
They very soon discovered how infinitely stronger we were and how much more abundant our resources than they had imagined.
We
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finally agreed with them to take fifteen millions instead of twenty-five millions which they offered.’
The 7 per cent. bonds of the government were taken at 77.
The
Secretary said the government took the money really because
Mr. Slidell advised the step to assist the negotiations for recognition of
France.
At that very time, when the government wanted no money, the Ordnance Department was drawing the copper to make
percussion caps from old distillery outfits in
North Carolina and the commanding generals stood aghast at the long line of shoeless, ragged men in their ranks.
The
Erlanger loan was placed in
London with immediate and astonishing success.
March 3, 1863,
Mr. Erlanger had returned and the first offering of $5,000,00 appeared on Lombard street. Before the day closed $10,000,000 had been subscribed and the premium was 5 per cent. When the aggregate of bids for the entire loan of $15,000,000 was summed up $75,000,000 had been subscribed.
The government, now endeavoring to make order, sent
Mr. Colin J. McRae, a successful cotton factor of
Mobile, to
Europe as its financial agent.
McRae soon sent home a protest against the neglect of his government in failure to make proper control of the blockade running business.
He found the
Liverpool market fairly well supplied with cotton, brought through by private enterprise.
He earnestly urged that the government should take charge of the blockade running and control the commerce to its own advantage.
He gave as one reason for his counsel information that much cotton escaped the blockade direct for the port of New York.
Two splendid
iron ships of war for the
Confederacy were completed on the
Clyde by
Captain Bulloch.
The other brother,
Captain Bulloch (both uncles of
President Roosevelt) arrived in
London to take command of one, for work against the enemy, and
Commodore Matthew F. Maury arrived to take command of the other.
Ambassador Charles Francis Adams discovered the approaching readiness of the ships to put to sea. The American minister again played his old game of bluff successfully.
He at once called on Earl Russell, her Majesty's
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and demanded the sailing of the ships should be promptly forbidden.
The banker,
George Peabody, agreed to put up the $5,000,000 gold that
Russell required, to indemnify his government, and the ships were thrown out of the
Confederate possession at once,
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before leaving their docks.
All ships building in
Europe on account of the
Confederates then ceased.
The Southern cause was dead in
Europe.
General Lee returned from
Pennsylvania upon a drawn battle and
General Johnston lost
Vicksburg in the same days of midsummer in the third year of the war. Confederate sympathizers in
England grew despondent.
The Southern people did not grow despondent, nor did the army for a moment lose faith in the final outcome of the war. It is a notable fact that the
battle of Gettysburg did not come within the plans of
Lee, and would not have occurred at all had
Lee's order to the marching van of his army been duly executed.
Gettysburg village did not lie on his line of invasive march.
It was reached by the turning of a head of corps in the van at right angles to the prescribed course from headquarters.
And the movement was a surprise to the
commanding general.
Not less notable an instance of disobedience of orders from
Johnston was the retreat of a wing of his army into
Vicksburg and the resultant seige and inevitable capitulation that followed.
Other Confederate agents.
Several young men were sent abroad to excite the good will of foreign people toward the government of the
Confederacy and its people.
Major Norman S. Walker, of
Richmond, was placed at
Bermuda to receive and forward merchandise both ways.
Mr. Henry Holze, some time one of the editorial writers of the Mobile
Register, was sent to
London in a confidential government office.
Mr. Edwin de Leon, a noted newspaper paragraphist, was sent to
England with $25,000 to purchase, if need be, space in important journals for the discussion by him of the
Southern situation for the better enlightenment of the public as well as the government.
Various other citizens were sent abroad on missions of the government from time to time.
After the cruiser
Alabama began upon her wonderful work on the high seas, the neutrality promised by
Great Britain at the outbreak of the war languished.
The
United States continued to get all the support it needed from English trade, while the corresponding benefit was denied to the Southern Confederacy.
Both belligerents were negotiating for the construction of war ships by British builders
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when the
Alabama was launched, yet after the war
England paid losses inflicted by the cruiser on Northern commerce to the sum of $15,000,000.
We have seen that the
South did in fact face a frowning world.
While the government lived, to the latest moment of its life, the proud spirit of its Chieftain was burdened with no doubt or the shadow of a doubt.
In the period of his vicarious sacrifice that followed the fall, his memory stands forth in the splendor of dignity, truth and valorous endurance incarnate.
