'Well, suppose you did, what then?'
'Merely, England would not have a ship in six months to carry your
cotton. A war with her would ruin the shipping trade of the North. Our
marine would seek employment at privateering, and soon sweep every
British merchant ship from the ocean. We could afford to give up ten
years' trade with you, and have to put down seccession by force, for the
sake of a year's brush with John Bull.'
'But, my good friend, where would the British navy be all the while?'
'Asleep. The English haven't a steamer that can catch a Brookhaven
schooner. The last war proved that vessels of war are no match for
privateers.'
'Well, well! but the Yankees won't fight.'
'Suppose they do. Suppose they shut up your ports, and leave you with
your cotton and turpentine unsold? You raise scarcely anything
else--what would you eat?'
'We would turn our cotton-fields into corn and wheat. Turpentine-makers,
of course, would suffer.'
'Then why are not _you_ a Union man?'
'My friend, I have two hundred mouths to feed. I depend on the sale of
my crop to give them food. If our ports are closed, I can not do
it,--they will starve, and I be ruined. But sooner than submit to the
domination of the cursed Yankees, I will see my negroes starving and my
child a beggar.
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