It was a mistake, he thought, to believe that there was a magic power in cotton, that “Cotton is King” and could do all and more than it was possible for a navy to accomplish. Along this line, he declared, “There seems to be a vague idea floating in the public mind of the South that, somehow or other, cotton is to enable us to do, if not entirely, at least to a great degree, what other nations require armies and navies to accomplish for them. Because cotton-wool is essential to the industry of certain people, and because we are the chief growers of cotton-wool, therefore, say these political dreamers, we can so treat cotton, in a diplomatic way, as both to enforce obedience to our revenue laws at home and secure respect to our citizens abroad. But can we? Did ever unprotected wealth secure immunity to its owner? In the first place, cotton becomes, when handled in any other way than the regular commercial way, a two-edged sword, as apt to wound producer as consumer. Every obstacle, which we place between it and the channels of commerce here, operates as a bounty for its production elsewhere. It is a very current but mistaken idea to suppose that this is the only country in the world properly adapted to the cultivation of cotton. No such thing. Should even the present paper blockade continue for a few years, and cotton rule at the present New York prices of 22 cents, or even at 15 cents, our political dreamers may wake up and find the cotton scepter, if not entirely lost to our hold, at least divided in our hand.... Suppose England and France do not choose for a few months to come to break this paper blockade, which we have not the naval strength to force, paper though it be, does it follow that that blockade, weak and ineffectual as, up to this time, it has notoriously been, will continue so until those nations get ready to act? The amount appropriated for the Lincoln navy during the current year is upwards of $40,000,000.... We cannot, either with cotton or with all the agricultural staples of the Confederacy put together, adopt any course which will make cotton and trade stand us as a nation in the stead of a navy”.