all were hostile. It is
idle to talk about Union men here: many want peace, and fear war
and its results; but all prefer a Southern, independent government,
and are fighting or working for it. Every gold dollar that was
spent for cotton, was sent to the seaboard, to be exchanged for
bank-notes and Confederate scrip, which will buy goods here, and
are taken in ordinary transactions. I therefore required cotton to
be paid for in such notes, by an obligation to pay at the end of
the war, or by a deposit of the price in the hands of a trustee,
viz., the United States Quartermaster. Under these rules cotton is
being obtained about as fast as by any other process, and yet the
enemy receives no "aid or comfort." Under the "gold" rule, the
country people who had concealed their cotton from the burners, and
who openly scorned our greenbacks, were willing enough to take
Tennessee money, which will buy their groceries; but now that the
trade is to be encouraged, and gold paid out, I admit that cotton
will be sent in by our open enemies, who can make better use of
gold than they can of their hidden bales of cotton.

I may not appreciate the foreign aspect of the question, but my
views on this may be ventured. If England ever threatens war
because we don't furnish her cotton, tell her plainly if she can't
employ and feed her own people, to send them here, where they
cannot only earn an honest living, but soon secure independence by
moderate labor. We are not bound to furnish her cotton. She has
more reason to fight the South for burning that cotton, than us for
not shipping it. To aid the South on this ground would be
hypocrisy which the world would detect at once. Let her make her
ultimatum, and there are enough generous minds in Europe that will
counteract her in the balance. Of course her motive is to cripple
a power that rivals her in commerce and manufactures, that
threatens even to usurp her history. In twenty more years of
prosperity, it will require a close calculation to determine
whether England, her laws and history, claim for a home the
Continent of America or the Isle of Britain. Therefore, finding us
in a death-struggle for existence, she seems to seek a quarrel to
destroy both parts in detail.

Southern people know this full well, and will only accept the
alliance of England in order to get arms and manufactures in
exchange for their cotton. The Southern Confederacy will accept no
other mediation, be