with the whole military power--a conscription of wealth of every
kind together with conscription of men. But in 1862 such an idea
was too advanced for any group of Americans. Nor, in that year,
was there as yet any certain evidence that the Treasury was
facing an impossible situation. Its endeavors were taken
lightly--at first, almost gaily-because of the profound illusion
which permeated Southern thought that Cotton was King. Obviously,
if the Southern ports could be kept open and cotton could
continue to go to market, the Confederate financial problem was
not serious. When Davis, soon after his first inauguration, sent
Yancey, Rost, and Mann as commissioners to Europe to press the
claims of the Confederacy for recognition, very few Southerners
had any doubt that the blockade, would be short-lived. "Cotton is
King" was the answer that silenced all questions. Without
American cotton the English mills would have to shut down; the
operatives would starve; famine and discontent would between them
force the British ministry to intervene in American affairs.
There were, indeed, a few far-sighted men who perceived that this
confidence was ill-based and that cotton, though it was a power
in the financial world, was not the commercial king. The majority
of the population, however, had to learn this truth from keen
experience.

Several events of 1861 for a time seemed to confirm this
illusion. The Queen's proclamation in the spring, giving the
Confederacy the status of a belligerent, and, in the autumn, the
demand by the British Government for the surrender of the
commissioners, Mason and Slidell, who had been taken from a
British packet by a Union cruiser--both these events seemed to
indicate active British sympathy. In England, to be sure, Yancey