“My God!” he said when he had figured out the thousands of men who had come to the front, from these so-called Indian territories, to maintain the existence of the nation, “If we in the South had known that you had turned those Indian territories into great States, we never should have gone into this war.”  The incident throws a light upon the state of mind of men in the South, even of well educated men in the South, at the outbreak of the War.  They might, of course, have known by statistics that great States had grown up in the North-west, representing a population of millions and able themselves to put into the field armies to be counted by the thousand.  They might have realised that these great States of the North-west were vitally concerned with the necessity of keeping the Mississippi open for their trade from its source to the Gulf of Mexico.  They might have known that those States, largely settled from New England, were absolutely opposed to slavery.  This knowledge was within their reach but they had not realised the facts of the case.  It was their feeling that in the coming contest they would have to do only with New England and the Middle States and they felt that they were strong enough to hold their own against this group of opponents.  That feeling would have been justified.  The South could never have been overcome and the existence of the nation could never have been maintained if it had not been for the loyal co-operation and the magnificent resources of men and of national wealth that were contributed to the cause by the States of the North-west.  In 1880, I had occasion, in talking to the two thousand students of the University of Minnesota, to recall the utterance of the old planter.  The students of that magnificent University, placed in a beautiful city of two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, found it difficult on their part to realise, amidst their laughter at the ignorance of the old planter, just what the relations of the South had been before the War to the new free communities of the North-west.

In February, 1865, with the fall of Fort Fisher and the capture 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