As it was, several powerful rams were under construction for the Confederacy in 1861 and 1862 in the yards of the Lairds. But the continued insistence of Minister Adams on the unlawfulness of this proceeding, joined with the fact that the Confederates had no recognizable navy to back up their purchases, at last compelled the British government to take these rams over and add them to its own sea power. President Jefferson Davis declined the offer of the East India ships for the apparent reason that the military necessities of the Confederacy pressed hard upon the financial resources of the new government. Every member of his government was quite thoroughly convinced that the National power could not successfully invade the South, provided a strong army were quickly put into the field. The ready material for good soldiers was much more abundant in the South than in the North; nearly all Southern men were horsemen, hunters, marksmen, out-of-door men. On the other hand, the first levies from the North were mostly city men, unaccustomed to firearms, strangers to exposure, flabby of physique. Manassas amply illustrated the great superiority as soldiers of the first comers from the South over the first comers from the North. The Confederate leaders counted upon making permanent the advantage which they were confident of gaining in the field at the outset. To purchase out of hand ten steamships, from resources that were yet to be created, and with the manhood of seven States demanding to be armed, looked, indeed, like madness. And yet this was the very card which, if played, would have saved the Confederacy's game. Conceive for a moment the Union navy debarred from entrance into the James or any of the navigable waters of Virginia, to support military operations in the direction of Richmond. Conceive Wilmington, N. C., which was an easily defensible port, and which really remained open to the blockade runners for almost two years after the beginning of the war, rendered a fairly safe point of departure for European trade throughout the war. Conceive the Mississippi, from Cairo southward to its mouth, continuously under the power of the Confederacy, with a fleet of river gunboats backed up by a Gulf squadron. Does any one imagine that in that case the North could have made either any warlike or commercial use of the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, or even the Mississippi from Cairo up to St. Louis?