In the language of the "Richmond Examiner," "the possession of the lead,
copper, and salt mines, and the pork, corn, and hay-crop of these
countries, Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia, is now vital to the
existence of the Confederacy. This section of the country is the
keystone of the Southern arch. It is now in great peril, as is the great
artery through which the life-blood of the South now circulates. Whether
the East Tennessee and Virginia railroad is to be surrendered, whether
the only adequate supply of salt is to be lost, whether the only
hay-crop of the South is to be surrendered, are questions of vast and
pressing importance."
The wall of fire to which allusion has sometimes been made in debate is
now closing in around the Southern Confederacy. The Mississippi is
closed. But a single point of contact, at Vicksburg, remains between the
States west of the Mississippi and the Atlantic States. Texas is
insulated. The blockade is daily becoming more stringent upon the
seaboard. One effort more, soon to be made, must sever the rich valleys,
mines, and furnaces of Tennessee from the cotton districts, and the
exhaustion of supplies of every description will soon become more and
more apparent.
It is undoubtedly true that an occasional cargo escapes the blockade,
that a few boat-loads of supplies are ferried by treason at the midnight
hour across the Chesapeake, and sold at extravagant prices; but what
does this amount to? What a contrast this trade presents to the millions
of tons which used to reach the South from the Free States and Europe
before it was crushed by the rebellion! And what a contrast does it
present to-day to the commerce of the North,--to the barks and
propellers which float down the Lakes deeply laden with grain,--to the
weekly exports of New York, (twelve millions for the last three
weeks,)--to its vast income from duties,--to the ships of the North
visiting every ocean, earning more freight than for years past, although
deprived of the carrying-trade of the South, and contending successfully
with the marine of Great Britain for the supremacy on the ocean! How
signal has thus far been the failure of the Southern prophecies made
before the outbreak!
New York, we were told, was dependent on Southern commerce, and was to
be ruined by the war; there were to be riots in the streets, and its
palaces were to fall in ruins: but the riots and the ruins are to be
found only in Southern latitudes.
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