know it, hundreds, yea thousands of barrels of salt and millions of dollars had been disbursed; and I have no doubt that Bragg’s army at Tupelo, and Van Dorn’s at Vicksburg, received enough salt to make bacon, without which they could not have moved their armies in mass; and that from ten to twenty thousand fresh arms, and a due supply of cartridges, have also been got, I am equally satisfied.  As soon as I got to Memphis, having seen the effect in the interior, I ordered (only as to my own command) that gold, silver, and Treasury notes, were contraband of war, and should not go into the interior, where all were hostile.  It is idle to talk about Union men here:  many want peace, and fear war and its results; but all prefer a Southern, independent government, and are fighting or working for it.  Every gold dollar that was spent for cotton, was sent to the seaboard, to be exchanged for bank-notes and Confederate scrip, which will buy goods here, and are taken in ordinary transactions.  I therefore required cotton to be paid for in such notes, by an obligation to pay at the end of the war, or by a deposit of the price in the hands of a trustee, viz., the United States Quartermaster.  Under these rules cotton is being obtained about as fast as by any other process, and yet the enemy receives no “aid or comfort.”  Under the “gold” rule, the country people who had concealed their cotton from the burners, and who openly scorned our greenbacks, were willing enough to take Tennessee money, which will buy their groceries; but now that the trade is to be encouraged, and gold paid out, I admit that cotton will be sent in by our open enemies, who can make better use of gold than they can of their hidden bales of cotton.

I may not appreciate the foreign aspect of the question, but my views on this may be ventured.  If England ever threatens war because we don’t furnish her cotton, tell her plainly if she can’t employ and feed her own people, to send them here, where they cannot only earn an honest living, but soon secure independence by moderate labor.  We are not bound to furnish her cotton.  She has more reason to fight the South for burning that cotton, than us for not shipping it.  To aid the South on this ground would be hypocrisy which the world would detect at once.  Let her make her ultimatum, and there are enough generous minds in Europe that will counteract her in the balance.  Of course her motive is to cripple a power that rivals her in commerce and manufactures, that threatens even to usurp her history.  In twenty more years of prosperity, it will require a close calculation to determine whether England, her laws and history, claim for a home the Continent of America or the Isle of Britain.  Therefore, finding us in a death-struggle for existence, she seems to seek a quarrel to destroy both parts in detail.

Southern people know this full well, and will only accept the alliance of England in order to get arms and manufactures in exchange for their cotton.  The Southern Confederacy will accept no other mediation, because she knows full well that in Old England her slaves and slavery will receive no more encouragement than in New England.