1, 1863, the next installment of fifteen percent of the purchase
money. Thereupon Mason undertook to "bull" the market. Agents of
the United States Government were supposed to be at the bottom of
the drop in the bonds. To defeat their schemes the Confederate
agents bought back large amounts in bonds intending to resell.
The result was the expenditure of some six million dollars with
practically no effect on the market. These "Erlanger bonds" sold
slowly through 1863 and even in 1864, and netted a considerable
amount to the foreign agents of the Confederacy.

The comparative failure of the Erlanger loan marks the downfall
of King Cotton. He was an exploded superstition. He was unable,
despite the cotton famine, to coerce the English workingmen into
siding with a country which they regarded, because of its support
of slavery, as inimical to their interests. At home, the
Government confessed the powerlessness of King Cotton by a change
of its attitude toward export. During the latter part of the war,
the Government secured the meager funds at its disposal abroad by
rushing cotton in swift ships through the blockade. So important
did this traffic become that the Confederacy passed stringent
laws to keep the control in its own hands. One more cause of
friction between the Confederate and the State authorities was
thus developed: the Confederate navigation laws prevented the
States from running the blockade on their own account.

The effects of the blockade were felt at the ends of the earth.
India became an exporter of cotton. Egypt also entered the
competition. That singular dreamer, Ismail Pasha, whose reign
made Egypt briefly an exotic nation, neither eastern nor western,
found one of his opportunities in the American War and the