Removing the Basis

The Confederate Congress is evidently in a state of alarm.  On Wednesday last in the rebel Senate, a resolution was offered abolishing all ports of entry, repealing all duties upon imports and forbidding all exports except by special permission of the Government, and another “encouraging” planters and owners of cotton and tobacco to destroy their crops, to prevent them from falling into our possession; the encouragement proposed consisting in a promise of indemnification by the government.

The rebels have been noted as political economists; but there is a delicious and peculiar simplicity about the last proposition, which is seriously urged by a convention of planters, as well as soberly considered in their Congress.  It will be remembered that the Confederate loan was thought particularly secure, because it was founded upon cotton and tobacco, two great staples always in demand.  So many million of dollars, so many hundred thousand bales of cotton, said Mr. Memminger, and “What better security can you get?”  Very well; and now it is recommended to the planters to destroy the cotton – which is the security – and not only this, but, with a fatuity which is almost incredible, the planters propose that the Confederate government shall pay to them the money it has paid on the security of this cotton, for destroying that which alone give value to the notes they will receive. – N. Y. Eve. Post.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, March 15, 1862, p. 2