The Starvation question.
--The North set out in this contest under several very remarkable, but at the same time very comfortable delusions. They considered it a plain proposition that twenty millions of people could readily whip eight; and they accordingly began to parcel out our Southern lands in Yankee farms before they commenced their invasion; forgetting the homely maxim, ‘"better not count your chickens before they are hatched"’ This delusion has somewhat cleared away since the affairs at Bethel, Manassas and Springfield, but still retains a chronic hold upon the Northern mind.Another delusion was fondly cherished in regard to our slave population. They confidently expected our negroes to rise upon their masters at the first alarm of war; and a servile insurrection to rage throughout the South, while their victorious armies were marching triumphantly, plundering and ravishing, ad-libitum, through our territory. This delusion, too, has been dispelled. The negroes were never so quiet, never so loyal to their duty, as they have been during the six months just gone by. They have taken the same interest in the war for the South that our white people have done, and have helped to slay Yankee soldiers on the field of battle. An authentic instance is told of a servant at Manassas having killed two soldiers of the enemy, during the progress of the battle, by stoning them to death. The Yankees have stolen negroes, and persuaded some of them to runaway from their masters on some portions of the sea board; but there is scarcely an instance of negro violence to white people recorded during the whole progress of the present war. The period of the war has, strange to say, been a period remarkable for its exemption from this sort of trouble to the South.
But the most amusing of all the hallucinations of the North in the outset of the war, was the belief that their own States fed the Southern people; and that, by blockading our ports, they would starve us into submission. --Yankees are a shrewd and intelligent people in all matters of business and in all practical affairs. They ought to have understood the resources of the country well enough to know the fallacy of this notion. But their belief in our non-production of food was so flattering to their vanity, and so comfortable to their self complacency, that they would not take the trouble to ascertain with certainty the facts of the case which were readily accessible. And that was the theory of their blockade — that we would starve by our separation from the North; and, like the prodigal son, would in due time return from feeding upon the husks of secession, begging the fare of servants, in the bitterness of our penitence and humiliation. The blockade had other objects indeed; such as that of keeping arms and ammunition out of our reach, and cutting us off from direct communication with Europe; but its primary idea was to starve us into contrition.
The census tables of 1850 abundantly show that the South produced more of the great articles of human food per man and according to population than the North; and these tables were everywhere open to Northern inspection. They remained, however, ‘"willingly ignorant"’ of a fact which so ill comported which their favorite theories in regard to the facility of Southern subjugation. As we took occasion to prove in detail some months ago, the census of 1850 demonstrates that the South, though embracing but 33 per cent of the population of the Union, produced wheat more than sufficient for its entire population, exporting considerable quantities to the North and to South America; produced also 40 per cent of the entire corn crop of the Union, and 39 per cent. of all the animals that were slaughtered for food. Besides these articles, she produced her rice crop which enters so considerably as an item in the consumption of food; as well as quite as many sweet and Irish potatoes per man as the North produced of the latter. Besides these articles of food, she produced a very large sugar crop with the due proportion of that most invaluable luxury and necessary of the table — molasses. She did all this too, while producing full crops of her two great staples of cotton and tobacco; our export abroad of which, besides the consumption within the Union, was in 1860 worth $210,000,000! We have no doubt that when the census statistics of 1860 transpire, if not garbled by the Yankee Government, they will show a considerable increase of the Southern production in all these articles of food and of income.
Yet, this is the country which the Yankees, in their ignorance and stupidity, expect to starve into contrition and submission!
When England blockades New castle, for the purpose of cutting off its supplies of coal; when Australia sends to Europe for gold; and when Connecticut begins to import tin cups, wooden clocks, hams and nutmegs, then the North may expect to hear a general wail rising up from all the South for bread!
The cereal crops of 1861 are the most enormous ever known in the South. It would be no exaggeration to say that they are sufficient, alone, to supply the South with food for two or three years. It is thus that Providence conspires to confound and bring to derision all Northern calculations in this war.
