Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/235

 CONFEDERATE STATES 231 was authorized to the amount of $50,000,000, in addition to a previous loan of $15,000,000. These sums were to be raised by the sale of confederate bonds, redeemable at the expi- ration of 20 years, with interest at 8 per cent, per annum. The president was authorized to accept the services of 100,000 volun- teers, to serve during the war. There being no means to create a regular navy, 15 or 20 small vessels were commissioned as privateers, and in the course of the summer a considera- ble number of prizes were taken or destroyed. On May 21 the congress adjourned to meet again on July 20 in Richmond, Va., which had been agreed upon as the confederate capital, and continued to be such until the fall of the confederacy. Nearly all the available troops of the confederacy were concentrated in Vir- ginia, along a line extending from Harper's Ferry to Norfolk. Their strongest position was at Manassas Junction, on the direct road from Washington to Richmond, where Beauregard was in command with a force of 20,000 men. The entire force in Virginia, including militia, was about 60,000, and was under the command of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, formerly of the United States army. Among the other officers who soon became distinguished were Robert E. Lee, T. J. Jackson, commonly called "Stone- wall " Jackson, E. Kirby Smith, James Long- street, and A. P. Hill. To oppose this formi- dable force the national government concen- trated an army at Washington under the nom- inal command of the aged and infirm G.en. Win- field Scott. This force mainly occupied the Virginia side of the Potomac opposite the city. The United States government at this time was very much embarrassed by want of arms. The loss of Harper's Ferry left it with no arsenal of construction but that of Springfield, Mass. It had men in abundance, but its forces lacked not only arms but discipline. Many of its best officers had resigned from the army to enter the southern service, and its troops were raw levies compared with those of the south, who had been in training for several months longer. Every exertion was made to remedy these de- ficiencies. Agents were sent abroad to pur- chase arms, and the private manufactories in the northern states were worked to their ut- most capacity. On April 19 the president pro- claimed a blockade of all ports in the seceding states ; and as the existing navy was not suffi- cient for the purpose, the navy department bought or chartered hundreds of merchant vessels and fitted them for war. On May 3 the president issued a proclamation calling for 42,000 volunteers to serve for three years, and also for 22,000 men to be added to the regular army and 18,000 to the navy. Persons of known or suspected treasonable conduct were arrested by order of the secretary of state, and confined in some of the national forts, and military offi- cers were instructed to disregard all writs of habeas corpus issued for the release of such prisoners. These measures of the president were without sanction of law, but congress at its next session formally approved them, and declared them legalized and valid on the ground that they were war measures demanded by the exigency of circumstances and essential to the safety of the republic. We have now traced the origin and progress of secession from its commencement in November, 1860, to its culmi- nation in May, 1861, when it resulted in one of the greatest wars recorded in the annals of mankind. The movement had been singularly rapid, because the material and the motives for it had been long accumulating, and it was con- trolled by able and experienced politicians, who perfectly understood the temper and the feelings of the population with which they had to deal, and skilfully worked upon their am- bition, their prejudices, their hopes, and their fears. On the confederate side of this great struggle were enlisted states containing five or six millions of whites, more than a million of them capable of bearing arms, brave, high- spirited, and warlike, accustomed to the use of weapons from childhood, confident of their own superior prowess and despising that of their opponents, and confident also of the rec- titude of their cause and of the soundness of the principle of state sovereignty, for which mainly they had appealed to the gage of bat- tle. On the other hand was a nation of 20,- 000,000, equally brave, though less accus- tomed to the use of arms, preferring peace to war, and if possible even more confident of the justice of their cause, and prepared to make any sacrifices for the salvation of the Union and the preservation of their country from the fate of the Spanish American republics. Both sides were of the same lineage, spoke the same language, professed the same religion, and, with the sole exception of slavery, differed little in manners, morals, general culture, and civiliza- tion. In the south agriculture was the pre- dominant pursuit, and cotton its most valuable product. In the north agriculture was more diversified, and in addition to it a vast amount of manufacturing and commercial industry was carried on. The north was richer, and by its marine could command the sea, while its for- eign trade supplied it with whatever arms and munitions of war it failed to produce within its own limits. The south at first was largely in- fatuated with the notion that the " northerners would not fight, and that if they did fight every southerner was a match for five of them." A delusion even more general in the south was expressed by the current phrase, " Cotton is king ;" by which was meant that the cotton of the south was an essential element of the pros- perity of the north and of the manufacturing countries of Europe ; and that if the southern supply of the material was cut off, intolerable suffering would result, especially in England and France, which would compel the govern- ments of those countries to interfere in behalf of the south. This delusion was soon dispelled by the logic of events. Though the price of