Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/114

 102 Southern Historical Society Papers.

[From the Sunday JSews, Charleston, S. C., July 17, 1904.]

CONFEDERATE DIPLOMACY.

The Opposition Our Representatives Faced in Europe.

MR. JOHN WITHERSPOON DuBOSE REVIEWS THE FAILURE OF CONFEDERATE DIPLOMACY.

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 pow- ers 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 v;orld. The Confederate States made prompt advances for admission of the most refined free government that had ever