Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/404

366 The Cabinet was soon organized, being composed as follows: Department of State—Mr. Robert Toombs, of Georgia; Department of War—Mr. Leroy P. Walker, of Alabama; the Treasury Department Mr. Charles G. Memminger, of South Carolina; the Post-office Department Mr. John H. Reagan, of Texas; the Navy Department—Mr. Stephen R. Mallory, of Florida; the Department of Justice—Mr. Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana.

Questions of inter-state commerce somewhat perplexing in their nature demanded immediate solution by the Confederate government. Among them, the most important was the trade that floated on the Mississippi river. The prospect of the shutting up of that river to western trade was alarming and irritating to the States lying above the Confederate border line. The Louisiana convention in appreciation of this alarm had pledged the faith of the State to preserve the navigation of the Mississippi free. Kentucky expressed the fear that unless the free trade policy be adopted the Confederacy will exact duties on goods passing up the Mississippi. This question proved to be one of the most difficult which the Confederate government had to determine; but the knot was cut by an act on February 2 2d, declaring the free navigation of the river.

A resolution instructing the committee on finance to inquire into the expediency of placing a duty on cotton exported to a foreign country was introduced by Mr. T. R. R. Cobb, of Georgia, who remarked on the power which the South held in its hands as the producer of a staple so necessary to the world. He thought that by embargo we could soon place the United States and Europe under the necessity of recognizing the independence of the Confederacy. Southern cotton was at that time seeking new channels to the sea. It was going up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and by rail through Tennessee and Virginia to Norfolk. Railroad managers