all its tributaries, isolating and cutting rebeldom in two, and thus
preventing supplies from Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, that the
contest must have been closed long ere this, and thus saved five or six
times the cost of these works. As indicating the consequence of our
occupation and command of the Mississippi and the Gulf, let us see its
effect on the supply of the single indispensable article of _beef_ to
the rebel army and people.

By the census of 1860, table 36, the number of cattle that year in the
loyal States was 7,674,000; in Texas alone, 2,733,267; in Louisiana,
329,855; and in Arkansas, 318,355;--in those parts of the rebel States
east of the Mississippi, not commanded by our troops and gunboats,
2,558,000, and in the parts of those States thus commanded by us,
1,087,000. Thus it will be seen, that the cattle in Texas alone (whence
the rebels, heretofore, have derived their main supplies), raised on
their boundless prairies, and rich perennial grass, have largely
exceeded all the cattle in those parts of the rebel States east of the
Mississippi, commanded by them. But that commanded by us, of the
Mississippi and its tributaries, and the Gulf, as is now the case, cuts
off the above supplies from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, west and north
Mississippi, north Alabama, and west and middle Tennessee. Hence the
cries of starvation from the South; hence, mainly, the rise there in the
price of beef, from a few cents to a dollar a pound. Controlled, as the
Gulf and Mississippi and its tributaries now are by us, so as to prevent
any Western supplies of beef, and the desolation and inundation which
have swept over so much of the rest of rebeldom since 1860, their army
and people cannot be supplied with beef throughout this year. Nor would
running the blockade help them in this respect, for Europe has no
supplies of beef to spare, requiring large amounts from us every year.
The revolt, then, is doomed this year by starvation, if not, as we
believe, by victories. Indeed, I imagine, if our Secretaries of War and
of the Navy were called on for official reports, they could clearly
show, that with ample appropriations in July, 1861, and all these works
_then_ completed, they could have crushed the revolt in the fall of 1861
and winter of 1862. All, then, that has been expended since of blood and
treasure, and all the risks to which the Union may have been exposed,
result from the want of these works. Surely, these are mome