156 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



increase. The whole appropriation is $278,500, of which 

 $100,000 is for equipment and repairs. Now a navy 

 without vessels is like lamps without oil. The Richmond 

 Bill gives $50,000 to buy and build steamers and gun- 

 boats for coast defense, and $160,000 for two ironclad 

 gunboats for the defense of the Mississippi River and 

 the city of Memphis. . . . We may safely infer that 

 $50,000 will neither purchase nor build a great many 

 steamers or gunboats, nor enable us to provide very 

 efficiently for the defense of all the rivers except the 

 Mississippi, and of all the harbors, bays, creeks, and 

 sounds of our coast all the way from Washington on the 

 Potomac to Brownsville on the Rio Grande. Thus we 

 perceive that since Virginia and North Carolina, with 

 their defenseless, open, and inviting sea-front, seceded, 

 the sum of only $50,000 has been voted towards the 

 'purchase or construction' of a navy, for the defense of 

 the entire seacoast of the Confederacy! From this 

 analysis, and from all that we can see doing on the water, 

 it appears that the Government has not yet decided to 

 have a navy". 



It was a mistake, he thought, to believe that there was 

 a magic power in cotton, that "Cotton is King" and 

 could do all and more than it was possible for a navy to 

 accompHsh. Along this line, he declared, "There seems 

 to be a vague idea floating in the public mind of the 

 South that, somehow or other, cotton is to enable us to 

 do, if not entirely, at least to a great degree, what other 

 nations require armies and navies to accomplish for them. 

 Because cotton-wool is essential to the industry of cer- 

 tain people, and because we are the chief growers of 

 cotton-wool, therefore, say these political dreamers, we 

 can so treat cotton, in a diplomatic way, as both to enforce 



