is, of course, the true measure of strength. If, in 1861,
either side could have struck swiftly and with all its force, the story
of the war would have been different. The question of relative strength
was in reality a question of munitions. Both powers were glaringly
unprepared. Both had instant need of great supplies of arms and
ammunition, and both turned to European manufacturers for aid. Those
Americans who, in a later war, wished to make illegal the neutral trade
in munitions forgot that the international right of a belligerent to buy
arms from a neutral had prevented their own destruction in 1861. In
the supreme American crisis, agents of both North and South hurried to
Europe in quest of munitions. On the Northern side the work was done
chiefly by the three ministers, Charles Francis Adams, at London;
William L. Dayton, at Paris; and Henry S. Sanford, at Brussels; by
an able special agent, Colonel George L. Schuyler; and by the famous
banking-house of Baring Brothers, which one might almost have called the
European department of the United States Treasury.

The eager solicitude of the War Department over the competition of the
two groups of agents in Europe informs a number of dispatches that are,
today, precious admonitions to the heedless descendants of that dreadful
time. As late as October, 1861, the Acting Secretary of War wrote to
Schuyler, one of whose shipments had been delayed: "The Department
earnestly hopes to receive...the 12,000 Enfield rifles and the remainder
of the 27,000, which you state you have purchased, by the earliest
steamer following. Could you appreciate the circumstances by which we
are surrounded, you would readily understand the urgent necessity there
is for the immediate delivery of all the arms you are authorized to
purchase. The Department expects to hear that you have been able
to conclude the negotiations for the 48,000 rifles from the French
government arsenals." That the Confederate Government acted even more
promptly than the Union Government appears from a letter of Sanford to
Seward in May: "I have vainly expected orders," he complains, "for
the purchase of arms for the Government, and am tempted to order from
Belgium all they can send over immediately.... Meanwhile the workshops
are filling with orders from the South.... It distresses me to think
that while we are in want of them, Southern money is taking them away to
be used against us."

At London, Adams took it upon hi