Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/125

 Confederate Diplomacy. 113

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 govern- ment 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 govern- ment was able to command one-third that sum. "Cotton obliga- tions" 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 finan- ciering, 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 Ameri- can 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 the^e 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 $I5,OOO,OOO.

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