ndependence and to force
its recognition!

There are optimists everywhere; and even the dark days of Dixie proved
no exception to the rule. It was not unusual to hear prate of the
vast benefits derived from the blockade; of the energy, resource and
production, expressed under its cruel constriction! Such optimists--equally
at fault as were their pessimistic opponents--pointed proudly to the
powder-mills, blast-furnaces, foundries and rolling-mills, springing
up on every hand. They saw the great truth that the internal resources
of the South developed with amazing rapidity; that arms were manufactured
and supplies of vital need created, as it were out of nothing; but they
missed the true reason for that abnormal development, which was the dire
stress from isolation. They rejoiced to very elation at a popular effort,
spontaneous--unanimous--supreme! But they realized little that it was
exhaustive as well.

Could these life-needs the South was compelled to create within, have
been procured from without, they had not alone been far less costly in
time, labor and money--but the many hands called from work equally as
vital had not then been diverted from it. The South was self-supporting,
as the hibernator that crawls into a stump to subsist upon its own fat.
But that stump is not sealed up, and Bruin--who goes to bed in autumn,
sleek and round, to come out a skeleton at springtime--quickly
reproduces lost tissue. With the South, material once consumed was gone
forever; and the drain upon her people--material--mental--moral--was
permanent and fatal.

One reason why the result of the blockade--after it became actually
effective--was not earlier realized generally at the South, was that
private speculation promptly utilized opportunities, which the
Government had neglected. What appeared huge overstock of clothing and
other prime necessities had been "run in," while there was yet time;
and before they had advanced in price, under quick depreciation of
paper money. Then profits doubled so rapidly that--spite of their
enhanced risk from more effective blockade--private ventures, and even
great companies formed for the purpose, made "blockade-breaking" the
royal road to riches. Almost every conceivable article of merchandise
came to southern ports; often in quantities apparently sufficient to
glut the market--almost always of inferior quality and manufactured
specially for the great, but cheap, trade now sprung up.

Earlier v