Mr. James B. Eads of St. Louis, agreed to furnish these
steamers to the Government, the timber from which they were to be
built was still standing in the forest and the machinery with which
the armor was to be rolled was not constructed.

A year after the first battle was fought the naval force of the
United States had practically interdicted all legitimate commerce
with the Southern States. No more effective method of warfare
could have been devised. At the outbreak of the war the States in
rebellion were able to manufacture but few of the articles
indispensable to the ordinary life of a people. Their wealth was
purely agricultural. Cotton and tobacco were their only exports.
For a supply of manufactures the South had depended wholly upon
its trade with the North and with Europe. The natural effect of
the war was greatly to lessen production, and the blockade made it
impossible to find a market for any large portion of the diminished
product of cotton. As a striking evidence of the prosperity in
the South at the time it complained of oppression, the largest
cotton crop which had ever been grown was that of 1860. It numbered
more than five million two hundred thousand bales, nearly four and
a half millions of which had found a ready market in Europe and
the North before the outbreak of the war. The crop of 1861 was
little more than one-half that of the preceding year. Of the three
and a half millions which remained available for export at the end
of 1861 it was estimated that up to August, 1862, not more than
fifty thousand bales had been carried to England, the principal
foreign consumer.

The demand for food created by the Southern army caused a majority
of the plantations to raise corn, and the cotton crop of 1862 did
not amount to more than one million bales, very little of which
found a foreign market; and the supply and exportation diminished
from this time onward. Cotton which sold in December, 1861, in
Liverpool for 113/4_d_. per pound had risen in December, 1862, to
241/2_d_. per pound, and as a result, half a million persons in
England, dependent for their daily bread upon this manufacturing
industry, were thrown out of employment and reduced to beggary.
So great was the distress that by April, 1863, nearly two million
pounds sterling had been expended for their relief, and this sum
does not include the vast amounts expended in local volunteer
charities. English manufacturers saw that the supply