Philadelphia, and such prosperity as they had at one time enjoyed was now all but destroyed, through the rigidness of the Federal blockade. Back of the Northern cities, too, was a rich, highly cultivated, and thickly populated country, with numerous large towns, abounding in wealth, and with apparently as many men at home, attending to the ordinary duties of life, as if there was no war going on, and no huge armies in the field.
Not only was there no blockade to put an end to commerce, and to cause a deprivation of many of the necessaries of life, but commerce, as well as all manner of home industries, had been greatly stimulated; so that the war while it was starving the South, and forcing the male population into the field, until there were scarcely left enough to carry on absolutely needful trade and tillage actually appeared to be making the North rich, and thousands of people were literally coining money with government contracts} and by means of innumerable industries brought into being by the great conflict.
The Strength of the Federals.
The subjugation of the South was therefore simply a question of time, if matters continued as they were, and the Federals would achieve the ends they had in view by sheer force of numbers and practically inexhaustible resources, no matter how valiantly the Confederate soldiers might fight, or how skilfully they might be led. Was this subjugation of the South inevitable, however? This was the question that addressed itself to my mind, and upon the determination of which the course it would be best for me to pursue in the future would have to depend.
I was not very long in coming to the conclusion that a triumph of the Confederate cause was not by any means an impossibility, provided the right means were used to bring it about. I also speedily satisfied myself that the interests of the cause could be advanced just as much by diligent and zealous workers at the North, as by the men who were fighting the battles of the Confederacy in Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas ; and I was so well convinced that at last I had found the best field for the exercise of my own peculiar talents, that I greatly regretted not having made my way into the midst of the enemy's country long before.
