of the raw
product from America could no longer be depended upon, and efforts
were made to introduce the manufacture of the inferior staple from
India, but the experiment proved in the main unsatisfactory and
unprofitable.

The stringency of the blockade which prevented the exportation of
cotton, prevented also the importation of manufactured articles.
While compelled to acknowledge this fact, the Confederate Secretary
of State, Mr. Benjamin, attempted very cleverly to turn it to
account by showing the advantages which would accrue to the commercial
and manufacturing classes of England by the speedy triumph of the
rebellion. Writing to Mr. Mason, who represented the Confederacy
in England, Mr. Benjamin said, "The almost total cessation of
external commerce for the last two years has produced the complete
exhaustion of all articles of foreign growth and manufacture, and
it is but a moderate computation to estimate the imports into the
Confederacy at three hundred millions of dollars for the first six
months which will ensue after the treaty of peace." The unexpressed
part of the proposition which this statement covered was the most
interesting. The merchants and ship-owners of England were to
understand that the sale and transportation of this vast amount of
fabrics would fall into the hands of England if the Confederacy
should succeed, and that if it should fail, the domestic trade of
the United States would absorb the whole of it. It was a shrewd
appeal to a nation whose foreign policy has always been largely
influenced by considerations of trade.

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE BLOCKADE.

The economic condition of the South at this time may be compared
to that of a man with full purse, lost in a desert. Southern cotton
would easily sell in the markets of New York or Liverpool for four
times its price in Charleston, while the manufactures of Manchester
or of Lowell were worth in Charleston four times the price in
Liverpool or New York. Exchange was rendered by the blockade
practically impossible. When the profits of a successful voyage
from Liverpool to Charleston and return, would more than repay the
expense of the construction of the best steamer and of the voyage,
the temptation to evade the blockade was altogether too strong to
be resisted by the merchants and manufacturers of England. Blockade-
running became a regular business with them, and the extent to
which it