The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 14, July 1910 - April, 1911 Page: 133
348 p. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Last Hope of the Confederacy.
133
Of the document itself approximately the first half is omitted
here, a verbose and highly rhetorical introduction for which a sum-
mary will suffice. With a candor that could never have found ex-
pression in public speech or print at that day, Major Tyler declares
at the outset that the Confederacy is in a most desperate condition,
that it is gradually growing weaker, that without foreign aid all
the states east of the Mississippi except perhaps Virginia and the
Carolinas will be in the grasp of the enemy within less than a year,
that west of the Mississippi Texas alone is free and that prepara-
tions are being made even now for her invasion.' It is impossible
to believe, he says, that the Confederacy can ever recover its lost
territory and win its independence unaided. Foreign intervention
is absolutely essential.
Turning now to that subject, he quotes at considerable length
from an article in De Bow's Review, of 1862, in which the writer
attempts to explain the diplomatic situation abroad. Great Britain
is represented as having realized her great error in freeing the
slaves in her tropical colonies in 1833, by which act she had dimin-
ished her tropical products and seriously endangered her trade
supremacy. Fearing the competition of the semi-tropical agricul-
ture of the Southern states, based upon slave labor, and the grow-
ing commerce of the North based upon its monopoly of the South-
ern market, she had set to work to undermine both by develop-
ing abolition sentiment in Europe and the Northern states. She
had succeeded beyond her expectations, for now the war of sub-
jugation waged by the free states upon the South would not only
destroy the slave system and the agriculture of that region, but
would inevitably crush in reaction the economic power of the
North also. Great Britain believed this would relieve her of her
most dangerous commercial rival, restore to her the carrying trade
of the seas, discredit republican government, and maintain British
political institutions in the interest of the ruling classes. There-
fore she was content to see the two sections wear each other down,
and had rejected Napoleon's offer of joint mediation. The Rus-
sian Czar is represented as fearing to arouse the anger of his
nobles, whose serfs he had recently liberated, by inconsistently in-
1Two attempts were made by General Banks to invade Texas in the
fall of 1863: the first met defeat at Sabine Pass in September; the
second captured and held Brownsville from November to July 30, 1864.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 14, July 1910 - April, 1911, periodical, 1911; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101054/m1/147/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.