Blockade running was carried on as an extensive business all through the war, but reached its highest state of accomplishment in the closing year before the fall of Richmond. It was of a two fold character; one, of ships with Wilmington, North Carolina, as the port and the other of individuals who crossed the Potomac at night usually landing at Leonardtown, Charles County, Maryland. The ships took out cargoes of cotton, as this was about the only article, unless it was tobacco, left to be exported from the Southern Confederacy and they brought in return a miscellaneous cargo, not very extensive and not very large, most of the cotton shipments winding up as credits abroad in many cases for agents of the Confederate government, in other cases for individuals, either singly or as syndicates. For it became common in Richmond for a number of gentlemen to form a combination and make a shipment of cotton by a blockade runner for the profit it furnished. Almost all the ships that ran the blockade in and out of Wilmington flew the British flag and were English boats. Blockade running on the Potomac was another consideration. Its ordeal can best be illustrated by an attempt made by my mother and a friend of hers under unusual favorable circumstances. The trip from Richmond to the Potomac had to be made by private conveyance of some sort for there were no public vehicles or way of getting them and for entertainment en route reliance would have to be placed on such friendly housing and entertainment as could be secured from the inhabitants of the country through which one passed. There were no hotels or taverns, and as the inhabitants were not over well supplied, were in constant apprehension of the questionable strangers who made a business of blockade running, it can be conceived what difficulties must be encountered by any one who adopted this method of passing through the lines. It would have been easier perhaps to have gone by a flag of truce. A well known Southerner who is now in a prominent position in New York City had attention attracted to him by two occurrences that took place in his younger days. He was a general in the Confederate army and he resigned and joined the army as a private, that was quite sensational. Again he went out one day in front of the outer line of breastworks near Petersburg to exchange newspapers or some other thing as was the custom during the interims of fighting and two soldiers from the Union lines came out half way to meet him. When they reached midway between the breastworks on each side each Union soldier took him by the arms and marched him into their own lines. That was more sensational still and was susceptible of several constructions. The incident subjected him to undoubtedly unjust criticism and the true construction was that the Union soldiers had violated the conventional arrangement under which the belligerents exchanged small articles, but