n the march. Rosecrans had now succeeded Buell. He attacked Bragg
at Murfreesboro'. For a long time the contest was equal. In the end,
however, the Confederates were beaten and retired from the field.

CHAPTER 39

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

[Sidenote: The blockade.]

402. The Blockade.--On the fall of Fort Sumter President Lincoln
ordered a blockade of the Confederate seaports. There were few
manufacturing industries in the South. Cotton and tobacco were the
great staples of export. If her ports were blockaded the South could
neither bring in arms and military supplies from Europe, nor send cotton
and tobacco to Europe to be sold for money. So her power of resisting
the Union armies would be greatly lessened. The Union government bought
all kinds of vessels, even harbor ferryboats, armed them, and stationed
them off the blockaded harbors. In a surprisingly short time the
blockade was established. The Union forces also began to occupy the
Southern seacoast, and thus the region that had to be blockaded steadily
grew less.

[Sidenote: Effect of the blockade.]

403. Effects of the Blockade.--As months and years went by, and the
blockade became stricter and stricter, the sufferings of the Southern
people became ever greater. As they could not send their products to
Europe to exchange for goods, they had to pay gold and silver for
whatever the blockade runners brought in. Soon there was no more gold
and silver in the Confederacy, and paper money took its place. Then the
supplies of manufactured goods, as clothing and paper, of things not
produced in the South, as coffee and salt, gave out. Toward the end of
the war there were absolutely no medicines for the Southern soldiers,
and guns were so scarce that it was proposed to arm one regiment with
pikes. Nothing did more to break down Southern resistance than
the blockade.

[Sidenote: Hopes of the Southerners.]

404. The Confederacy, Great Britain, and France.--From the
beginning of the contest the Confederate leaders believed that the
British and the French would interfere to aid them. "Cotton is king,"
they said. Unless there were a regular supply of cotton, the mills of
England and of France must stop. Thousands of mill hands--men, women,
and children--would soon be starving. The French and the British
governments would raise the blockade. Perhaps they would even force the
United States to acknowledge the independence of the Confederate states.
There was