Chapter 50:
- Management of the Confederate Administration. -- importation of arms. -- permitted under International law. -- blockade Ineffective the First year. -- Federal Government obtained all arms Wanted from abroad. -- failure of Confederate Government in that respect. -- inefficiency of the agent. -- no arms forwarded during 1861. -- Administration occupied with manufacturing arms at home. -- nitre beds. -- purchase of a Navy. -- ten First-class steamers offered to the Confederate Government in May, 1861. -- offer declined. -- attempts to build ironclads, and late obtainment of a few ships. -- object not to raise the blockade, but to assail the Federal mercantile marine. -- efforts inefficient. -- financial operations. -- sale of time bonds in Europe secured by cotton, our true Resource.—$75,000,000 offered to the Confederates in London and Paris for time bonds secured by cotton. -- Administration resorted to constant issue of Treasury notes, not redeemed. -- compulsory funding in bonds. -- destroyed credit of Confederate States. -- diplomacy. -- consisted of arguments about rights and dependence of England on American cotton. -- Confederate Administration made no offer of commercial advantages by treaty. -- low duties and navigation laws. -- no diplomacy. -- defence of territory, population, and supplies. -- progressive losses. -- effect on public opinion and feeling. -- Confederate conscription, instead of State troops. -- impressment Makeshifts, instead of efficiency in Commissary and Quartermaster Departments. -- causes concurring to produce a disastrous end. -- the South after the War. -- present attitude in the Union. -- the future in store. -- memory of the late struggle.
In bringing this book to a close it may be pertinent and profitable to the reader in search of truth, to pass briefly in review the management of the Confederate government in several matters vitally affecting the issue of the cause. To do this it is necessary to note our success or failure in providing the ways and means of defence. These consisted: first, in the importation of arms and munitions of war from Europe; second, in the purchase of a navy; third, in the financial operations of the government; fourth, in its diplomacy with foreign nations, especially England and France. As a result following the action of the administration in these particulars, it is important to observe the progressive failure of the government in defending the territory, population, and supplies of the Southern States. With correct ideas on these subjects
