[481] which had been unfavourably reported to the public and to Congress. In that report, the following occurs: “In the packing season of 1860-1861 upward of three million head of hogs were packed at the various porkeries of the United States, besides those packed by farmers at home, of which less than twenty thousand were packed at regular establishments south of the lines of our armies. Of this whole number, experts estimate that the product of about one million two hundred thousand hogs was imported in the early part of the last year from beyond our present lines into what is now the Southern Confederacy. This was accomplished, and to the extent of a bountiful supply by the action of the State authorities in some cases, by the enterprise of private parties, and by this department, through agencies of its own. Of this number it is estimated that about three hundred thousand hogs, or their bacon equivalent, have been consumed by our State and Confederate armies since the commencement of hostilities. Tennessee then became the main reliance for the future use of the army, which, together with the accessible portions of Kentucky, had been so ravaged by hog cholera and injured by short corn crops for three years preceding the year just closed, that the number slaughtered at the porkeries within her limits had deviated from two hundred thousand head to less than twenty thousand. It was into this field, just recovering from these disasters, and almost the sole resource of the army, and the planters and inhabitants of cities, that this department had to enter as a purchaser, dubious of a sufficiency, but assured of a heavy and active competition.”
Shortly after the date of this report, the successive captures of Forts Henry and Donelson caused the loss of a considerable portion of the supplies referred to. The subsequent campaign lost us Kentucky and much of Tennessee, and left the Confederacy comparatively bare of meat.
In this early prospect of distress a number of propositions were made to the Confederate Government by responsible and energetic parties, to exchange through the enemy's lines meat for cotton. But to this favourable exchange President Davis was opposed; he was actually weak enough to suppose that if a little cotton was kept from the enemy, the North would be unable to pay the January interest of 1863; and he was among those stupid financiers who were for confining cotton, as if there were magical salvation in it, and hoarding this inert wealth of the South.
In the fall of 1862, a party properly vouched for proposed, for an equivalent in cotton, to deliver thirty thousand hogsheads of bacon through the lines. It was alleged that there was enough cotton to feed and clothe our army, in a section tributary to Memphis, which city was then, and had been for some time previous, in the secure possession of the enemy; that such cotton must otherwise probably be destroyed to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy; but that the owners, as a general rule,
