[Footnote 682:  The historians who see only economic causes have misinterpreted the effects on policy of the “cotton famine.”  Recently, also, there has been advanced an argument that “wheat defeated cotton”—­an idea put forward indeed in England itself during the war by pro-Northern friends who pointed to the great flow of wheat from the North as essential in a short-crop situation in Great Britain.  Mr. Schmidt in “The Influence of Wheat and Cotton on Anglo-American Relations during the Civil War,” a paper read before the American Historical Association, Dec. 1917, and since published in the Iowa Journal of History and Politics, July, 1918, presents with much care all the important statistics for both commodities, but his conclusions seem to me wholly erroneous.  He states that “Great Britain’s dependence on Northern wheat ... operated as a contributing influence in keeping the British government officially neutral ...” (p. 423), a cautious statement soon transformed to the positive one that “this fact did not escape the attention of the English government,” since leading journals referred to it (p. 431).  Progressively, it is asserted:  “But it was Northern wheat that may well be regarded as the decisive factor, counterbalancing the influence of cotton, in keeping the British government from recognizing the Confederacy” (p. 437).  “That the wheat situation must have exerted a profound influence on the government ...” (p. 438).  And finally:  “In this contest wheat won, demonstrating its importance as a world power of greater significance than cotton” (p. 439).  This interesting thesis has been accepted by William Trimble in “Historical Aspects of the Surplus Food Production of the United States, 1862-1902” (Am.  Hist.  Assoc.  Reports, 1918, Vol.  I, p. 224).  I think Mr. Schmidt’s errors are:  (1) a mistake as to the time when recognition of the South was in governmental consideration.  He places it in midsummer, 1863, when in fact the danger had passed by January of that year. (2) A mistake in placing cotton and wheat supply on a parity, since the former could not be obtained in quantity from any source before 1864, while wheat, though coming from the United States, could have been obtained from interior Russia, as well as from the maritime provinces, in increased supply if Britain had been willing to pay the added price of inland transport.  There was a real “famine” of cotton; there would have been none of wheat, merely a higher cost. (This fact, a vital one in determining influence, was brought out by George McHenry in the columns of The Index, Sept. 18, 1862.) (3) The fact, in spite of all Mr. Schmidt’s suppositions, that while cotton was frequently a subject of governmental concern in memoranda and in private notes between members of the Cabinet, I have failed to find one single case of the mention of wheat.  This last seems conclusive in negation of Mr. Schmidt’s thesis.]

[Footnote 683:  Speech at Rochdale, Sept. 1, 1861.  Cited in Hunt’s Merchants Magazine, Vol. 45, pp. 326-7.]