m to them--that they were
trustful and satisfied, until the stern grasp of necessity roughly
shook them from their golden dream. And they awoke, like the sleeper of
German legend, to find their hands filled with worthless yellow leaves
and grains of chaff, where they had dreamed of treasure beyond compare.

Immediately upon his appointment, thoughtful men--who could look a
little beyond the rose-colored clouds of the present--had pressed upon
Secretary Memminger the necessity for establishing heavy foreign
credits, to draw against in case of future need. The currency of the
southern banks was comparatively nothing, in view of increased
expenditures. The cotton which was gold--food--clothing--everything to
the South, with the open ports of the North, would be more worthless
than the wampum of the Indians, so soon as the threatened blockade
might seal up her ports and exclude the European purchaser. But, on the
contrary, if that cotton were bought on the faith of the
Government--and planters would willingly have sold their last pound for
Confederate bonds; if it were shipped to Europe at once and sold in her
market, as circumstances might warrant, the Confederacy would, in
effect, have a Treasury Department abroad, with a constantly accruing
gold balance. Then it could have paid--without agencies and middlemen
beyond number, who were a constant moth in the Treasury--in cash and at
reduced prices, for all foreign supplies; those supplies could have
been purchased promptly and honestly, and sent in before the blockade
demanded a toll of one-half; but above all, the interest and principal
of such bonds to the planters could have been paid in coin, and a
specie circulation thus been made, instead of the fatal and endless
paper issues that rendered Confederate credit a scoff, and weakened the
confidence of the southern people in the ability and integrity of that
department.

In this sense--and this sense alone--_Cotton was king!_ But the hands
that could have lifted him safely upon a throne and made every fiber a
golden sinew of war, weakly wrested the scepter from his grasp, and hid
him away from the sight and from the very memory of nations.

It was as though the youngest of the nations aped the legendary
traditions of the oldest. After the potent and vigorous King Cotton was
killed by starvation, Confederate finance treated him as Jewish myth
declares dead King Solomon was treated. In his million-acred temple, he
stood--