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reported as received by the Nitre and Mining Bureau is surprisingly small and the figures cannot adequately measure the production, which, nevertheless, by a liberal estimate, must have been insignificant as compared with that of the North. 11 Despite the unfavorable conditions under which they labored, the Confederates did not lack munitions of war. Through home manufacture and imports by blockade-runners, they always had a sufficient supply of small arms and ordnance; the small arms came chiefly from abroad, the field, siege and sea-coast artillery were produced mainly in the arsenals and workshops of the Confederacy. Their rifles were equal in efficiency to those used by the Union soldiers and breech-loading carbines were made in Richmond for the cavalry. During the last two years of the war, the Northern artillery may have been superior to the Southern. In 1861 and 1862 the Confederates captured many arms from their enemy, but in 1863 the conditions were reversed and they lost at Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Port Hudson seventy-five thousand stand of small arms and in addition a considerable amount of ordnance. 12 England and France desired the cotton and tobacco which glutted the Southern markets whilst the South needed the arms, munitions of war and iron which England could furnish in abundance. This desirable exchange was prevented by the blockade; hence it became necessary to resort to blockade-running—an enterprise which attracted capital by reason of its enormous profits when successful. This trade in 1861 was of an improvised character and was carried on by the Southern coasting steamers, whose regular business was gone, and by small craft which, though slow, had little difficulty at first in evading the blockade and reaching some near-by neutral port. Vessels laden with

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