 |
| Confederate State Department seal.1 |
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[35]
astonishing.
The blockade becoming more and more stringent every day, they perceived the necessity of relying upon their own ingenuity and industry for the materials of war; and forges, and foundries, and powder manufactories soon appeared in various parts of the Confederacy, while those already established were taxed to their utmost capacity in responding to orders.
Of these the great Tredegar Iron Works, at Richmond (see page 36), was the most extensive of its kind within the limits of the Slave-labor States, and some of the most effective heavy ordnance used by the Confederate Army, and projectiles of various kinds, were made there, directly under the eye of the so-called government.
The labors of this establishment in the cause of the rebellion made its name and deeds familiar to every American.
Jefferson Davis was quick to act upon the authority of the decree of the Confederate Congress concerning the banishment of Union men. He issued a proclamation on the 14th of August, in accordance with the intent of that decree; and then commenced those terrible persecutions of loyal inhabitants within the limits of the “Confederate States,” under the sanction of law, which .made that reign of terror in those regions tenfold more dreadful than before.
This, and the Confiscation Act, put the seal of silence upon the lips of nearly all Union men. Few could leave, for obstacles were cast in their way. To remain was to acquiesce in the new order of things, or suffer
1 this delineation of the seal is from a pass which the “Secretary of State” of the Confederacy issued in the following form:--
while on a visit to Fort Fisher, North Carolina, in the spring of 1866, the writer met a resident of Wilmington and a native of North Carolina, who had been employed in the secret service of the National Government during a portion of the war, with the commission of colonel, and in command of a regiment of 850 spies, who were scattered over the Confederacy. He also entered the service of the Confederacy as a spy, in order that he might work more efficiently for his Government, and was furnished with a pass like the above, on the margin of which, it should have been mentioned, was an exact description of the person to whom it was given. He desired to furnish each of his spies with such a pass. Through some of them in Richmond, he procured a large number of blank passes. These required the impression of the seal of the “State Department.” he went to Richmond, and through spies there, professedly in the service of the Confederates, he was introduced to Judah P. Benjamin, then “Secretary of State,” and visited his office daily for about a fortnight, endeavoring to ascertain where the seal of the “Department” was kept. He was finally successful. One day, when no one was in the office but a boy, he sent him on an errand, and then going boldly to the place where the seal was kept, he made an impression of it in wax. He then started with his own pass to “go into the Yankee lines.” he hastened to Washington, and thence to New York, where he had a seal cut in steel precisely like the original. With this he stamped the blank passes, which he properly filled up and signed successfully with the forged name of Benjamin. With these he furnished his spies with passes, and they performed essential service by gaining information in the camps and at the Capital, and in communicating with the blockading squadrons. The commander of this regiment of spies was arrested several times on suspicion, but was never implicated by sufflicient proof.
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.