Lincoln, the unknown

LINCOLN THE UNKNOWN • 161At the outset of the war, the Northern navy closed all Southernports, guarded 189 harbors and patrolled 9,614 miles ofcoast line, sounds, bayous, and rivers.It was the most gigantic blockade the world had ever seen.The Confederates were desperate. They couldn't sell theircotton; neither could they buy guns, ammunition, shoes, medicalsupplies, or food. They boiled chestnuts and cotton-seed tomake a substitute for coffee, and brewed a decoction of blackberryleaves and sassafras root to take the place of tea. Newspaperswere printed on wall-paper. The earthen floors of smokehouses,saturated with the drippings of bacon, were dug up andboiled to get salt. Church bells were melted and cast intocannon. Street-car rails in Richmond were torn up to be madeinto gunboat armor.The Confederates couldn't repair their railroads or buy newequipment, so transportation was almost at a standstill; cornthat could be purchased for two dollars a bushel in Georgia,brought fifteen dollars in Richmond. People in Virginia weregoing hungry.Something had to be done at once. So the South offered togive Napoleon III twelve million dollars' worth of cotton if hewould recognize the Confederacy and use the French fleet tolift the blockade. Besides, they promised to overwhelm him withorders that would start smoke rolling out of every factory chimneyin France night and day.Napoleon therefore urged Russia and England to join him inrecognizing the Confederacy. The aristocracy that ruled Englandadjusted their monocles, poured a few drinks of JohnnyWalker, and listened eagerly to Napoleon's overtures. The UnitedStates was getting too rich and powerful to please them. Theywanted to see the nation divided, the Union broken. Besides,they needed the South's cotton. Scores of England's factorieshad closed, and a million people were not only idle but destituteand reduced to actual pauperism. Children were crying forfood; hundreds of people were dying of starvation. Public subscriptionsto buy food for British workmen were taken up in theremotest corners of the earth: even in far-off India and povertystrickenChina.There was one way, and only one way, that England couldget cotton, and that was to join Napoleon III in recognizingthe Confederacy and liftingthe blockade.If that were done, what would happen in America? The South