genius. Lincoln was still new to the world and he had not yet been classified. For some months the proclamation had but little effect on the southern coast. But erelong the vessels began to arrive from foreign waters, merchant vessels were fitted out and pressed into the service of the Government, the northern shipyards were in operation day and night turning out new vessels. First one port and then another was actually blockaded by armed vessels of war. At the beginning of the year 1862 an expedition fitted out in New York was sent southward under the command of General Burnside and Commodore Goldsborough. Albemarle Sound was soon closed to the commerce of the world. Newbern, the chief port of North Carolina, next fell into the hands of the northern fleet. Fort Macon met the same fate. Meantime the great Farragut had closed the Mississippi River. These operations all took place within the first year after the blockade had been instituted. The next year Charleston was hemmed in by a cordon of northern vessels, and the next witnessed the fall of Mobile, and that port henceforth was

closed. Thus month by month the grip of the blockade tightened, and the business of the blockade-runner became a perilous business. The freight rates charged by these runners rose to five hundred dollars per ton, and this meant, of course, that no bulky goods were conveyed in them. By the close of 1864 the Confederate States were hemmed in so effectually that they had little communication with the outside world. Great stacks of cotton piled along the seaboard could be bought for four cents a pound, while it was worth two dollars and fifty cents at Liverpool. A ton of salt, worth seven dollars and a half at Nassau, was worth seventeen hundred dollars in gold at Richmond. The South was in the greatest need of arms and many other articles, but it had not learned to manufacture them, nor could they be had from abroad. It was not possible for the people of the South to begin manufacturing on any great scale at this time, when nearly all their best men were in the army. They were therefore peculiarly distressed by the blockade.

It was not chiefly the depletion of the armies

that weakened the South. It was the blockade that shut off the Confederate States from the markets of the world, that prevented the sale of cotton and tobacco, that bankrupted the treasury. It was the blockade, more than anything else, that brought about the ultimate exhaustion and collapse of the South. Had the markets of the world been open to the South, its conquest by the North would hardly have been possible.

The Border States

The border States were those slave States lying nearest the free States-Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri. Sometimes, also, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas were included among the border States, as distinguished from the cotton or Gulf States. During the war, however, the term usually referred to the four slave States that did not secede from the Union,— namely, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Of the fifteen slave States, therefore, but eleven seceded. As between free and slave States, one of the latter, Delaware, was looked upon as almost a neutral. The form of slavery in

this State was mild, nor was the size of the State such as to give it great importance in the great conflict; but it was confidently expected by the South that the other three border States would join the Confederacy. In this hope they were disappointed, and in this fact lay one of the weaknesses of the South, and one of the important causes of northern success.

It was the skill of President Lincoln, above all things, that saved the border States from secession. When a large portion of the northern people were clamoring for immediate emancipation, the far-sighted President hesitated. So long did he hesitate, that many grew weary with waiting. Exasperated, they denounced him as slow and phlegmatic, and unfit to fill the great office at such a momentous period. They did not know that the sagacious Lincoln was hesitating for the wisest of reasons, one of which was his fear of offending the border States and driving them into the Confederacy. When the Hotspurs in Congress and elsewhere were denouncing the slaveholder and the institution of slavery in unmeasured terms, Lincoln was holding conferences with the leading men

slaveholders of the border States. He urged them to lead their States to accept compensated emancipation, while at the same time he was planning to lead Congress to offer it. This judicious course of the President was very effective in winning the good will of the border States and in holding them in the Union.

Never

If, however, these four States had joined the Confederacy, the North would still have been much stronger than the South-greater in extent, greater in population and wealth. theless, the South would have gained an immense advantage. The material gain would have been great, the moral gain still greater. Had the entire fifteen slave States presented a solid front to the world, they would have won a respect that they could not do as it was. If the countries of Europe were contemplating a recognition of the Confederacy, they must have been checked by the fact that the slave States were not united. Again, throughout the North there was a strong feeling in various sections that the seceding States should be permitted to depart in peace. Horace Greeley and Henry Ward Beecher, with many lesser lights, shared this