Abroad the agents of
North and South were fighting a commercial duel in which each
strove to monopolize the munitions market. The United States
Navy, seeing things from an angle entirely different from that of
the Boston Board of Trade, ably seconded the ministers by
blockading the Southern ports and by thus preventing the movement
of specie and cotton to Europe. As a consequence, fourmonth
notes which had been given by Southern agents with their orders
fell due, had to be renewed, and began to be held in disfavor.
Agents of the North, getting wind of these hitches in
negotiations, eagerly sought to take over the unpaid Confederate
orders. All these details of the situation help to explain the
jubilant tone of this dispatch from Brussels late in November,
1861:
"I have now in my hands complete control of the principal rebel
contracts on the continent, viz.: 206,000 yards of cloth ready
for delivery, already commencing to move forward to Havre; gray
but can be dyed blue in twenty days; 100,000 yards deliverable
from 15th of December to 26th of January, light blue army cloth,
same as ours; 100,000 blankets; 40,000 guns to be shipped in ten
days; 20,000 saber bayonets to be delivered in six weeks.... The
winter clothing for 100,000 men taken out of their hands, when
they cannot replace it, would almost compensate for Bull Run.
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