But for the present the Federal navy was far too small to watch three thousand miles of littoral indented by spacious harbours and secluded bays, protected in many cases by natural breakwaters, and communicating by numerous channels with the open sea.  Moreover, it was still an even chance whether cotton became a source of weakness to the Confederacy or a source of strength.  If the markets of Europe were closed to her by the hostile battle-ships, the credit of the young Republic would undoubtedly be seriously impaired; but the majority of the Southern politicians believed that the great powers beyond the Atlantic would never allow the North to enforce her restrictive policy.  England and France, a large portion of whose population depended for their livelihood on the harvests of the South, were especially interested; and England and France, both great maritime States, were not likely to brook interference with their trade.  Nor had the Southern people a high opinion of Northern patriotism.  They could hardly conceive that the maintenance of the Union, which they themselves considered so light a bond, had been exalted elsewhere to the height of a sacred principle.  Least of all did they believe that the great Democratic party, which embraced so large a proportion of the Northern people, and which, for so many years, had been in close sympathy with themselves, would support the President in his coercive measures.

History, moreover, not always an infallible guide, supplied many plausible arguments to those who sought to forecast the immediate future.  In the War of Independence, not only had the impracticable nature of the country, especially of the South, baffled the armies of Great Britain, but the European powers, actuated by old grudges and commercial jealousy, had come to the aid of the insurgents.  On a theatre of war where trained and well-organised forces had failed, it was hardly to be expected that raw levies would succeed; and if England, opposed in 1782 by the fleets of France, Spain, and Holland, had been compelled to let the colonies go, it was hardly likely that the North, confronted by the naval strength of England and France, would long maintain the struggle with the South.  Trusting then to foreign intervention, to the dissensions of their opponents, and to their own hardihood and unanimity, the Southerners faced the future with few misgivings.

At Richmond, finding himself without occupation, Major Jackson volunteered to assist in the drilling of the new levies.  The duty to which he was first assigned was distasteful.  He was an indifferent draughtsman, and a post in the topographical department was one for which he was hardly fitted.  The appointment, fortunately, was not confirmed.  Some of his friends in the Confederate Congress proposed that he should be sent to command at Harper’s Ferry, an important outpost on the northern frontier of Virginia.  There was some opposition, not personal to Jackson and of little moment, but it called forth a remark that shows the estimation in which he was held by men who knew him.