HUMANITY OF THE CONFEDERATES. 643 necessities of the war, made so not by our choice. We have done everything we can consistently with the duty we owe to ourselves. We intend to do the same in the future. But that great suffering must ensue if your prisoners remain in our hands, is very certain. For that reason, I propose that all of them be delivered to you in exchange, man for man, and officer for officer, according to grade, for those of ours whom you hold. Will not the cause of humanity be far more promoted by such a course, even if, as you suggest, the friends of prisoners, both North and South, are satisfied of the exaggeration of the reports of suffering so rife in both sections? If, however, prisoners are to remain in confinement, at least, let us mutually send to their relief and comfort stationary agents, whose official duty requires them to devote all their time and labour to their sacred mission." Gen. Grant did not reply. Perhaps he thought matters were too near the end to entertain any new negotiations on the subject referred to. However this may be, whatever was to be the catastrophe, the conclusion is simply stated: it was to leave the Confederacy with a complete record of justice, a testimony of humanity, on the whole subject of the exchange and treatment of prisoners, which must ever remain among the noblest honours and ourest souvenirs of a lost cause. CHAPTER XXXIX. HOW SHERMAN'S MARCH THROUGH GEORGIA DEVELOPED A ORISIS IN THE CONFEDERACY.-GEU- -EXECUTIVE MISMANAGEMENT IN RICHMOND.-HOW THE CONSCRIPTION LAW WAS CHEAT 66 66 GEOGRAPHICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF SUBJUGATION. 645 DAVIS' TRIBUTE TO THIS STATE.—WANT OF RESOLUTION IN OTHER PARTS OF THE CONFEDERACY.-SUMMARY EXPLANATION OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERACY.PROPOSITION TO ARM THE SLAVES OF THE SOUTH INDICATIVE OF A DESPERATE CONDITION. -HOW IT WAS IMPRACTICABLE AND ABSURD.-NOT FIVE THOUSAND SPARE MUSKETS IN THE CONFEDERACY.-PALTRY LEGISLATION OF CONGRESS.-GRASPING AT SHADOWS. THERE was nothing fatal in a military point of view in Sherman's meinorable march; and yet it dated the first chapter of the subjugation of the Confederacy. It brought the demoralization of the country to the surface; it had plainly originated in the pragmatic and excessive folly of President Davis; it furnished a striking occasion for recrimination, and was accompanied with a loss of confidence in his administration, that nothing but a miracle could repair. We have already referred in another part of this work to the physical impossibility of the subjugation of the South at the hands of the North, as long as the integrity of the public resolution was maintained. This impossibility was clearly and distinctly stated, in an address of the Congress to the people of the Confederate States as late as the winter of 1864-5. That body then declared, with an intelligence that no just student of history will fail to appreciate: "The passage of hostile armies through our country, though productive of cruel suffering to our people, and great pecuniary loss, gives the enemy no permanent advantage or foothold. To subjugate a country, its civil government must be suppressed by a continuing military force, or supplanted by another, to which the inhabitants yield a voluntary or forced obedience. The passage of hostile armies through our territory cannot produce this result. Permanent garrisons would have to be stationed at a sufficient number of points to strangle all civil government before it could be pretended, even by the United States Government itself, that its authority was extended over these States. How many garrisons would it require? How many hundred thousand soldiers would suffice to suppress the civil government of all the States of the Confederacy, and to establish over them, even in name and form, the authority of the United States? In a geographical point of view, therefore, it may be asserted that the conquest of these Confederate States is impracticable." The "geographical point of view" was decisive. The Confederacy was yet far from the extremity of subjugation, even after Sherman had marched from Northern Georgia to the sea-coast. He had left a long scar on the State; but he had not conquered the country; he had been unable to leave a garrison on his route since he left Dalton; and even if he passed into the Carolinas, to defeat him at any stage short of Richmond would be to re-open and recover all the country he had overrun. It was the fashion in the North to get up painted maps, in which all the territory of the South traversed by a Federal army, or over which there was a cob-web line of military occupation, was marked as conquest, and the other parts desig nated as the remnant of the Confederacy. This appeal to the vulgar eye was not without effect, but it was very absurd. Lines drawn upon paper alarmed the multitude; it was sufficient for them to know that the enemy was at such and such points; they never reflected that a title of occupa tion was worthless, without garrisons or footholds, that it often depended upon the issue of a single field, and that one or two defeats might put the whole of the enemy's forces back upon the frontiers of the Confederacy. But the military condition of the Confederacy must be studied in connection with the general decay of public spirit that had taken place in the country, and the impatience of the hardships of the war, when the people had no longer confidence in its ultimate results. This impatience was manifested everywhere; it amounted to the feeling, that taking the war to be hopeless, the sooner it reached an adverse conclusion the better; that victories which merely amused the imagination and insured prolongation of the war, were rather to be deprecated than otherwise, and that to hurry the catastrophe would be mercy in the end. Unpopular as the administration of President Davis was, evident as was its failure, there were not nerve and elasticity enough in the country for a new experiment. The history of the last Confederate Congress is that of vacillating and bewild. ered attempts to reform and check the existing disorder and the evident tendency to ruin-weak, spasmodic action, showing the sense of necessity for effort, but the want of a certain plan and a sustained resolution. In the last periods of the war, the demoralization of the Confederacy was painfully apparent. The popular resolution that had been equal to so long a contest, that had made so many proffers of devotion, that had given so many testimonies of sacrifice and endurance, had not perhaps inherently failed. But it had greatly declined in view of Executive mismanage ment, in the utter loss of confidence in the Richmond Administration, and under the oppressive conviction that its sacrifices were wasted, its pur poses thwarted, and its efforts brought to nought, by an incompetent gov ernment. This official mismanagement not only impaired the popular effort, but by the unequal distribution of burdens incident to weak and irregular governments, even where such is not designed, incurred the charge of corrupt favour, and exasperated large portions of the community. Rich and powerful citizens managed to escape the conscription-it was said in Richmond that it was "easier for a camel to go through the of a needle than for a rich man to enter Camp Lee;" but the rigour of the law did not spare the poor and helpless, and the complaint was made in the Confederate Congress that even destitute cripples had been taken from their homes, and confined in the conscription camps, without reference to physical disability so conspicuous and pitiful. It was not unusual to see at the railroad stations long lines of squalid men, with scraps of blankets in their hands, or small pine boxes of provisions, or whatever else they eye DIMINUTION OF CONFEDERATE SUPPLIES. 647 might snatch in their hurried departure from their homes, whence they had been taken almost without a moment's notice, and ticketed for the various camps of instruction in the Confederacy. In armies thus recruited, desertions were the events of every day. There were other causes of desertion. Owing to the gross mismanagement of the commissariat, and a proper effort to mobilize the subsistence of the Confederacy, the armies were almost constantly on short rations, sometimes without a scrap of meat, and frequently in a condition bordering on absolute starvation. The Confederate soldier, almost starving himself, heard constantly of destitution at home, and was distressed with the suffering of his family, and was constantly plied with temptation to go to their protection and relief. A depreciated currency, which had been long abused by ignorant remedies and empirical treatment reduced nearly every home in the Confederacy to the straits of poverty. A loaf of bread was worth three dollars in Richmond. A soldier's monthly pay would scarcely buy a pair of socks; and paltry as this pay was, it was constantly in arrears, and there were thousands of soldiers who had not received a cent in the last two years of the war. In such a condition of affairs it was no wonder that desertions were numerous, where there was really no infidelity to the Confederate cause, and where the circumstances appealed so strongly to the senses of humanity, that it was impossible to deal harshly with the offence, and adopt for example the penalty of death. For every Confederate soldier who went over to the Federal lines, there were hundreds who dropped out from the rear and deserted to their homes. It was estimated in 1864, that the conscription would put more than four hundred thousand men in the field. Scarcely more than one-fourth of this number were found under arms when the close of the war tore the veil from the thin lines of Confederate defence. CONDITION OF THE COMMISSARIAT. We have elsewhere noticed the mismanagement of the Confederate commissariat, and the rapid diminution of supplies in the country. The close of the year 1864, was to find a general distress for food, and an actual prospect, even without victories of the enemy's arms, of starving the Confederacy into submission. On the 2d May, two days before the battles of the last spring commenced, there were but two days' rations for Lee's army in Richmond. On the 23d June, when Wilson and Kautz cut the Danville Railroad, which was not repaired for twenty-three days, there were only thirteen days' rations on hand for Gen. Lee's army, and to feed it the Commissary General had to offer market rates for wheat, then uncut or shocked in the field-thereby |