Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[159] Union, was also the last to leave it to join the Confederates; but, being surrounded on all sides by the latter, she allowed herself at last to be carried away, and on the 20th of May her convention proclaimed the ordinance of secession.

In the mean while, the Montgomery Congress was consolidating the new Confederacy which it represented, and adopting stringent measures to prepare for war. On the 16th of May it had ordered the issue of paper money to the amount of twenty million dollars. On the 21st it resorted to an ingenious experiment for the purpose of increasing its financial resources, through the promulgation of two decrees. The purport of the first was to absolve all Southern merchants from the obligation of paying their Northern creditors, but instead of cancelling these debts, it sought to appropriate them to its own profit. As may be imagined, not one of them was willing to conform to this requirement, which did not diminish their burden, but left them under the weight of a double claim. The object of the second decree was to concentrate in the hands of the government all the power which the ownership of cotton conferred. It reserved to itself the right to export this precious article, either by sea or land, to the exclusion of private individuals. It purchased the cotton from the latter, and paid in bonds, which it had the power to issue in unlimited quantities; then it sent this cotton to Europe to get gold in exchange, with which to procure such arms and outfits as it might require.

This lucrative trade could not be entirely prevented by the blockade; but as it encountered numerous obstacles, the financial combination of the Confederate government was more cleverly developed at a later period, to the cost of English capitalists, by means of what was called cotton loans, an operation through which that government obtained a large sum of money in specie on the London Exchange—the use of which we shall mention hereafter —offering as a sufficient guarantee those cargoes of cotton accumulated in its ports, the exportation of which was interfered with by Federal cruisers.

The line which was to separate the belligerents was therefore beginning to be distinctly drawn. The insurgents could find no more national property upon their soil to seize; street fights had decided the fate of the two large cities which they might at first