But these
obvious statistics only partially indicate the real situation.
Not what one has, but what one is capable of using is, of course,
the true measure of strength. If, in 1861, either side could
have struck swiftly and with all its force, the story of the war
would have been different. The question of relative strength was
in reality a question of munitions. Both powers were glaringly
unprepared. Both had instant need of great supplies of arms and
ammunition, and both turned to European manufacturers for aid.
Those Americans who, in a later war, wished to make illegal the
neutral trade in munitions forgot that the international right of
a belligerent to buy arms from a neutral had prevented their own
destruction in 1861. In the supreme American crisis, agents of
both North and South hurried to Europe in quest of munitions. On
the Northern side the work was done chiefly by the three
ministers, Charles Francis Adams, at London; William L. Dayton,
at Paris; and Henry S. Sanford, at Brussels; by an able special
agent, Colonel George L. Schuyler; and by the famous
banking-house of Baring Brothers, which one might almost have
called the European department of the United States Treasury.
The eager solicitude of the War Department over the competition
of the two groups of agents in Europe informs a number of
dispatches that are, today, precious admonitions to the heedless
descendants of that dreadful time.
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