“… Our prices will continue to be governed by the state of our relations with England on the Oregon question and remain unsettled until that matter is definitely and amicably adjusted. Should Great Britain decline the 49^th degree recently offd. by the U.S., peace between the two nations will no doubt be interrupted as this Government will not go below this line, therefore you will be able to judge from the tone of the English, whether we shall have an open rupture or not. …”

 

     Laid in is a partial copy of a letter from Mobile to Huth, dated January 1, 1846, mentioning a three-year contract with the French Government, and “unfavorable character of the advices” from England, having had “the effect to depress our cotton market … as the appearance of war will disappear, prices may be expected to recede to the Liverpool level…”

 

The Eslava Murrell firm was founded by Don Miguel Eslava, son of a Spanish Royal Governor of Mobile before it was captured by US forces in 1813; during the Civil War, Eslava was agent for nearly all the blockade runners who evaded Union naval patrols to reach the Confederate port.