Semmes’ Christmas present to Brown was a final contract signed with James T. Ames of Chicopee, Mass., for a huge shipment of cavalry sabers, haversacks, pistol pouches and other items.

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For the entire period Semmes and Hardee were conducting their business from the hotel, they could—and likely did—start each day by scanning The New York Times for developments in the paper’s headlines labeled “The Disunion Movement” and “The National Crisis.” Almost daily there was some mention of what was occurring back in Georgia for Semmes, Hardee—and the Northern businessmen with whom they were dealing—to plainly see.

On December 11, the paper reported from Milledgeville that “Gov. Brown is out in a long letter favoring disunion.” The next day a correspondent wrote from Columbus, “I have recently traveled throughout all the principal cities of Georgia and find the disunion feeling everywhere overwhelmingly in the ascendant.”

None of the news had any significant effect on the Georgians’ negotiations. They spent the holiday in Manhattan, and Semmes wrote Brown: “Col. Hardee & myself expect to leave for Richmond tomorrow morning—where we will conclude our day—then return immediately to Georgia.” Not a man to waste any opportunity, Semmes spent a few hours in Richmond with Joseph R. Anderson, negotiating the purchase of six 18-pounder guns and ammunition from the Tredegar Iron Works.

Finally arriving back in Columbus on January 3, Semmes immediately went to work preparing an accounting of his acquisitions for Brown. With a banker’s precision, he reported the total to the penny—$93,596.35. Just how much of what Brown’s trade delegation purchased was actually delivered to Savannah is uncertain. Theirs were by no means the only arms purchases being made for shipment South.

On January 25—more than four weeks after Semmes and Hardee left, and a week after Georgia’s secession—the Times startled its readers with the headlines “More Aid and Comfort” and “Wholesale Shipment of Arms to the South.” As the article pointed out: “In spite of the efforts of the police authorities to prevent the shipment of arms and other war munitions to the South, not a steamer has left this port since public attention was called to the subject, without carrying more or less of these materials. The instructions recently issued to the police require them to keep a watchful eye on all vessels about sailing for Southern ports, and to notify the superintendent whenever any arms, cartridges or other articles contraband of war are discovered going on board. In order to evade this espionage of the police, these shipments are always deferred until almost the last moment of the vessel’s hour of departure. The goods are then hurried down to the pier, the shipper gives a wink to the Purser and perhaps a quarter each to the stevedores, when the boxes of ‘Hardware’ are speedily hoisted on board, the fasts are let go, or cut and the guns have gone off.”

One of the problems authorities in New York faced in trying to block shipments at this stage was that Brown and other Southern governors threatened to retaliate by seizing Northern merchant vessels in their ports. Consequently, the commerce continued almost unobstructed until the Confederacy was formally established in February and a stiff ban was imposed on trafficking.

Access to Northern supplies became increasingly difficult once the war began. On April 14, 1861, two days after the firing on Fort Sumter, General Henry DuPont notified his company’s agent in Virginia—who had just taken a large order for gunpowder—that “a new state of affairs has arisen.” The corporate head told his representative: “Presuming that Virginia will do her whole duty in this great emergency and will be loyal to the Union, we shall prepare the powder, but with the understanding that should general expectation be disappointed and Virginia, by any misfortune, assume an attitude hostile to the United States, we shall be absolved from any obligation to furnish the order.”

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