o siding with a
country which they regarded, because of its support of slavery, as
inimical to their interests. At home, the Government confessed the
powerlessness of King Cotton by a change of its attitude toward export.
During the latter part of the war, the Government secured the meager
funds at its disposal abroad by rushing cotton in swift ships through
the blockade. So important did this traffic become that the Confederacy
passed stringent laws to keep the control in its own hands. One more
cause of friction between the Confederate and the State authorities was
thus developed: the Confederate navigation laws prevented the States
from running the blockade on their own account.

The effects of the blockade were felt at the ends of the earth. India
became an exporter of cotton. Egypt also entered the competition. That
singular dreamer, Ismail Pasha, whose reign made Egypt briefly an exotic
nation, neither eastern nor western, found one of his opportunities in
the American War and the failure of the cotton supply.

Chapter IV. The Reaction Against Richmond

A popular revulsion of feeling preceded and followed the great period of
Confederate history--these six months of Titanic effort which embraced
between March and September, 1862, splendid success along with
catastrophes. But there was a marked difference between the two tides of
popular emotion. The wave of alarm which swept over the South after
the surrender of Fort Donelson was quickly translated into such a high
passion for battle that the march of events until the day of Antietam
resounded like an epic. The failure of the triple offensive which closed
this period was followed in very many minds by the appearance of a new
temper, often as valiant as the old but far more grim and deeply seamed
with distrust. And how is this distrust, of which the Confederate
Administration was the object, to be accounted for?

Various answers to this question were made at the time. The laws of
the spring of 1862 were attacked as unconstitutional. Davis was held
responsible for them and also for the slow equipment of the army.
Because the Confederate Congress conducted much of its business in
secret session, the President was charged with a love of mystery and an
unwillingness to take the people into his confidence. Arrests under
the law suspending the writ of habeas corpus were made the texts for
harangues on liberty. The right of freedom of speech was dragged in
when Gen