of
Wilmington, the control of the coast of the Confederacy became complete.
The Southerners and their friends in Great Britain and the Bahamas (a
group of friends whose sympathies for the cause were very much enhanced
by the opportunity of making large profits out of their friendly
relations) had shown during the years of the War exceptional ingenuity,
daring, and persistence in carrying on the blockade-running. The ports
of the British West Indies were very handy, and, particularly during the
stormy months of the winter, it was hardly practicable to maintain an
absolutely assured barrier of blockades along a line of coast
aggregating about two thousand miles. The profits on a single voyage on
the cotton taken out and on the stores brought back were sufficient to
make good the loss of both vessel and cargo in three disastrous trips.
The blockade-runners, Southerners and Englishmen, took their lives in
their hands and they fairly earned all the returns that came to them. I
happened to have early experience of the result of the fall of Fort
Fisher and of the final closing of the last inlet for British goods. I
was at the time in prison in Danville, Virginia. I was one of the few
men in the prison (the group comprised about a dozen) who had been
fortunate enough to retain a tooth-brush. We wore our tooth-brushes
fastened into the front button-holes of our blouses, partly possibly
from ostentation, but chiefly for the purpose of keeping them from being
stolen. I was struck by receiving an offer one morning from the
lieutenant of the prison guard of $300 for my tooth-brush. The "dollars"
meant of course Confederate dollars and I doubtless hardly realised from
the scanty information that leaked into the prison how low down in
February, 1865, Confederate currency had depreciated. But still it was a
large sum and the tooth-brush had been in use for a number of months.
It then leaked out from a word dropped by the lieutenant that no more
English tooth-brushes could get into the Confederacy and those of us who
had been studying possibilities on the coast realised that Fort Fisher
must have fallen.

In this same month of February, into which were crowded some of the most
noteworthy of the closing events of the War, Charleston was evacuated as
Sherman's army on its sweep northward passed back of the city. I am not
sure whether the fiercer of the old Charlestonians were not more annoyed
at the lack of attention paid by Sherman to th