Note (return) — Chapter VII

By an act approved on the 26th of February, all laws which forbade the employment in the coasting-trade of vessels not enrolled or licensed, and all laws imposing discriminating duties on foreign vessels or goods imported in them, were repealed.129 These acts and all other indications manifest the well-known wish of the people of the Confederacy to preserve the peace and encourage the most unrestricted commerce with all nations, surely not least with their late associates, the Northern States. Thus far, the hope that peace might be maintained was predominant; perhaps, the wish was father to the thought that there would be no war between the States lately united. Indeed, all the laws enacted during the first session of the Provisional Congress show how consistent were the purposes and actions of its members with their original avowal of a desire peacefully to separate from those with whom they could not live in tranquillity, albeit the Government had been established to promote the common welfare. Under this state of feeling the Government of the Confederacy was instituted.