od, from the
blockade. The early capture of her river forts blocked access to her
wharves, almost effectually; though occasional steamers still slipped
up to them. Yet, she was in such easy reach of her more open neighbors,
as to reap part of the bad fruits with which they were so over-stocked.

These proud southern cities had ever been famed throughout the land,
for purity, high tone and unyielding pride. At the first bugle-blast,
their men had sprung to arms with one accord; and the best blood of
Georgia and the Carolinas was poured out from Munson's Hill to
Chickamauga. Their devoted women pinched themselves and stripped their
homes, to aid the cause so sacred to them; and on the burning
sand-hills of Charleston harbor, grandsire and grandson wrought side by
side under blistering sun and galling fire alike!

How bitter, then, for those devoted and mourning cities to see their
sacred places made mere marts; their cherished fame jeopardied by refuse
stay-at-homes, or transient aliens; while vile speculation--ineffably
greedy, when not boldly dishonest--smirched them with lowest vices of the
lust for gain! Shot-riddled Charleston--exposed and devastated--invited
nothing beyond the sterner business of money-getting. There, was
offered neither the leisure nor safety for that growth of luxury and
riotous living, which at one time possessed Wilmington.

Into that blockade mart would enter four ships to one at any other
port; speculators of all grades and greediness flocked to meet them;
and money was poured into the once-quiet town by the million. And, with
tastes restricted elsewhere, these alien crowds reveled in foreign
delicacies, edibles and liquors, of which every cargo was largely made
up. The lowest attache of a blockade-runner became a man of mark and
lived in luxury; the people caught the infection and--where they could
not follow--envied the fearful example set by the establishments of the
"merchant princes."

Was it strange that the people of leaguered Richmond--that the worn
hero starving in the trench at Petersburg--came to execrate those
vampires fattening on their life-blood; came to regard the very name of
blockade-runner as a stench and the government that leagued with it as
a reproach? For strangely-colored exaggerations of luxury and license
were brought away by visitors near the centers of the only commerce
left. Well might the soul of the soldier--frying his scant ration of
moldy bacon and grieving