South from all its foreign markets. In manufactures
the South could not compare at all. Northern factories alone could
not supply the armies. But finance and factories together could.
The Southern soldier looked to the battlefield and the raiding
of a base for supplying many of his most pressing needs in arms,
equipment, clothing, and even food--for Southern transport suffered
from many disabilities. Fierce wolfish cries would mingle with
the rebel yell in battle when the two sides closed. "You've got
to leave your rations!"--"Come out of them clothes!"--"Take off
them boots, Yank!"--"Come on, blue bellies, we want them blankets!"

It was the same in almost every kind of goods. The South made next
to none for herself and had to import from the North or overseas.
The North could buy silk for balloons. The South could not. The
Southern women gave in their whole supply of silk for the big balloon
that was lost during the Seven Days' Battle in the second year of
the war. The Southern soldiers never forgave what they considered
the ungallant trick of the Northerners who took this many-hued
balloon from a steamer stranded on a bar at low tide down near
the mouth of the James. Thus fell the last silk dress, a queer
tribute to Northern sea-power! Northern sea-power also cut off
nearly everything the sick and wounded needed; which raised the
death rate of the Southern forces far beyond the corresponding death
rate in the North. Again, preserved rations were almost unknown in
the South. But they were plentiful throughout the Northern armies:
far too plentiful, indeed, for the taste of the men, who got "fed
up" on the dessicated vegetables and concentrated milk which they
rechristened "desecrated vegetables" and "consecrated milk."

There is the same tale to tell about transport and munitions. Outside
the Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond the only places where Southern
cannon could be made were Charlotte in North Carolina, Atlanta and
Macon in Georgia, and Selma in Alabama. The North had many places,
each with superior plant, besides which the oversea munition world
was far more at the service of the open-ported North than of the
close-blockaded South. What sea-power meant in this respect may be
estimated from the fact that out of the more than three-quarters of
a million rifles bought by the North in the first fourteen months
of the war all but a beggarly thirty thousand came from overseas.

[Illustration: North and South in 186