was as strong as when it fought that battle, and could have driven Rosecrans from Tennessee with ordinary generalship. From March till June, in 1863, we remained idly stretching from Shelbyville to the right, while the Yankees, holding a line from Franklin to Woodbury, again and again afforded us an opportunity to fall, by rapid combinations, upon detached masses, and thus destroy their army. In July we occupied a strong ridge, stretching from BellBuckle towards Bradyville, very strong by nature on the right, and made strong by fortifications on the left, in front of Shelbyville. An injudicious disposition of forces left Hoover's Gap undefended by our army. Rosecrans advanced upon Hoover's Gap. Three brigades of Confederates moved rapidly up and held them in the gap for over forty hours. A rapid concentration of our forces at Hoover's Gap, or one half of them, by moving on the enemy's flank and rear, to a commanding position, which lay invitingly before us, would have routed the enemy, and planted us still more firmly in Tennessee. But we were ordered to retreat, and we retired before the scattered forces of the enemy, when a rapid combination and a vigorous attack, with a sudden change from a retrograde to an advance movement on some one of the enemy's masses in motion, might have insured victory. In that retrograde movement we also abandoned some remarkably strong positions without taking advantage of them, or making an effort to repulse the enemy, even when we could have done so without danger to our army.

At Chickamauga, the world knows, we lost the fruits of the victory for want of vigorous pursuit. On the night of the 20th of September there should have been no sleep and no repose. A vigorous, persistent, onward movement would have destroyed Rosecrans' army. How deplorable has been the consequences of our want of energy, want of activity, and want of persistence! The army of Tennessee being tied to no special line of operations, and embarrassed by no important point, such as Richmond, requiring to be defended, had greatly the advantage over the army of Virginia, yet the former has constantly yielded up territory to a conquering foe, and the latter has overthrown every army that came against it.

I have meant merely to allude to the errors on our line of operations. There are greater errors than these, greater because they pertain to the management of all the Confederate forces. They are errors in what is usually denominated grand strategy.

We now have, I may say, numerous independent armies in the field, each acting almost without reference to all the others, and rarely co-operating with any other army.

The Allied Armies, in 1814, entered France with 400,000 men, and had a numerous force hovering on the borders of that empire. Napoleon had but 120,000 in the field, exclusive of the forces shut up in fortifications and operating beyond the boundaries of France. We know how nearly he came to vanquishing the Allied Powers, and even his enemies have demonstrated how he could have completely overthrown the armies against which he contended. A rapid concentration of forces upon detached armies, is a well-established means by which inferior forces must conquer superior numbers. Superior mobility in strategy, and the concentrated, swift, lightning stroke in the hour of battle, must compensate for inferiority of numbers. Napoleon, Frederick the Great, and Charles the XII., have illustrated these facts, and they have become the most familiar lessons of the soldier. But, with proper strategy, in my

opinion, we need seldom fight superior forces. Look at the position of all our armies now. We are remaining listlessly waiting for the enemy to mass his forces and men upon us. Can any one contemplate this attitude of our armies, and not feel utterly astonished at our policy, and the repose into which we have sunk on every hand? Where is that activity which should belong to inferior forces? It is rather to be found among our enemies, whose superior numbers would entitle them to the repose which we have quietly assumed.

CHAPTER VI.

Political Movements in the Fall of 1863.-The "Peace Party" in the North.-The Yankee Fall Elections.-The War Democrats in the North.-The South's Worst Enemies.-Yankee Self-Glorification.-Farragut's Dinner-Party.-The Russian Banquet.-Russia and Yankeedom.-The Poles and the Confederates.-THE POLITICAL TROUBLES IN KENTUCKY.-Bramlette and Wickcliffe.-The Democratic Platform in Kentucky.-Political Ambidexterity.-Burnside's Despotic Orders.-The Kentucky "Board of Trade."-An Election by Bayonets.-The Fate of Kentucky Sealed.—OUR EUROPEAN RELATIONS.-Dismissal of the Foreign Consuls in the Confederacy.— Seizure of the Confederate "Rams" in England.-The Confederate Privateers.Their Achievements.-British Interests in Privateering.-The Profits of So-called "Neutrality."-NAVAL AFFAIRS OF THE CONFEDERACY.-Embarrassments of Our Naval Enterprise.-The Naval Structures of the Confederates.-LEE'S FLANK MOVEMENT IN VIRGINIA.-Affair of Bristoe Station.-Failure of Lee's Plans.-Meade's Escape to Centreville.-Imboden's Operations in the Valley.--Capture of Charlestown. -OPERATIONS AT RAPPAHANNOCK BRIDGE.-Kelley's Ford.-Surprise and Capture of Hayes' and Hoke's Brigades.-Gallantry of Colonel Godwin.-Lee's Army on the Rapidan.-THE AFFAIR OF GERMANIA FORD.--Meade Foiled.-The "On-to-Richmond" Delayed.

WE must take the reader's attention from military campaigns to certain political movements, which, in the fall of 1863, apparently involved more or less distinctly the fortunes of the

war.

The long-continued delusion, indulged by Southern men, of "a peace party" in the North, which would eventually compel peace on the terms of the Confederacy, is to be compared to that similar delusion of Northern politicians, which insisted that "a Union party" existed in the South, and that it was only temporarily suppressed by a faction. There was not the least foundation in fact for either of these opinions; and the agreeable confidence of the South, in its supposed friends in the North, was to be rudely dispelled by events that admitted of but one construction. The South had mistaken for substantial tokens of public sentiment the clamors and exaggerations of party elections. The Democratic party in the North went into the fall elections of 1863, on the issue of a general opposition to the Lincoln Administration; at the same time, promising a vigorous "constitutional" prosecution of the war, while their

vague allusions to an impossible peace and platitudes of fraternal sentiment were merely intended to catch favor in the South, and really meant nothing. Even Mr. Seymour, of New York, managed, while cozening the South, to maintain, on the other hand, a cordial understanding with the authorities at Washington; and he found it necessary to conclude one of his finest speeches by saying, "never have I embarrassed the Administration, and I never will."

But even on its moderate issues, with reference to the war, which, as we have seen, proposed only certain constitutional limitations, the Democratic party in the North was badly beaten in the fall elections. From Minnesota to Maine, the Democrats were defeated. In the latter, which was supposed to be the least fanatical of the New England States, the Republicans carried the election by an overwhelming majority. In Ohio, Vallandigham was defeated. He was still in exile. Voorhies, who had proclaimed doctrines somewhat similar to his, in a neighboring State, narrowly escaped being lynched by the soldiers. The elections were followed by a remarkable period of political quiet in the North. Those who had the courage to confront the administration of Lincoln, had either been suppressed by the strong hand of lawless power, or had supinely sought safety in silence. The overthrow of free government in the North was complete.

The South was not easily imposed upon by that organized hypocrisy, the War Democracy of the North. While it professed constitutional moderation in the conduct of the war, it aimed at the reconstruction of the Union, which was only a different phrase for the military conquest of the South. It must be observed that so far as questions of the constitutional conduct of the authorities at Washington were made in the North, they were questions entirely between their domestic parties, which did not properly interest the people of the Confederacy, inasmuch as their demand for independence, simple and absolute, had nothing to do with the modifications of the different parties which opposed it. Indeed, with regard to this demand, the War Democrat at the North was a far more dangerous enemy to the Confederacy than the open and avowed Abolitionist. The former was more plausible; his programme of reconstruction carried an appearance of possibility to entice

the popular faith which that of naked conquest did not possess. But both programmes-that of the War Democrat and that of the Abolitionist-were equally fatal to the Confederacy: as it mattered not what was the formula of subjugation, if the people of the South once placed themselves within the power of their treacherous enemies, and submitted to any form of their authority.

The North had yet shown no real disposition to abandon the war. The Yankees were still busy with the game of self-glorification. Their conceit, their love of display, their sensations amused the world. Their favorite generals were all Napoleons; in the cities mobs of admirers chased them from hotel to hotel; in the New England towns deputations of school-girls kissed them in public. Farragut, their successful admiral, was entertained in New York with feasts, where a plaster of ice-cream represented the American Eagle, and miniature ships, built of sticks of candy, loaded the table. These childish displays and vain glory had culminated in an immense banquet given to a Russian fleet in the harbor of New York, at which distinguished Yankee orators declared that the time had come when Russia and the United States were to be taken as twins in civilization and power, to hold in subjection all others of Christendom, and to accomplish the "destiny" of the nineteenth century.

And really this festive fervor but gave insolent expression to an idea that had long occupied thoughtful minds in distant quarters of the world. Christendom was called upon to witness two political murders. While twenty millions of Yankees sought to strangle the Southern Confederacy, fifty millions of Muscovites combined to keep ten or twelve millions of Poles under a detested yoke. In their infamous attempt upon Poland, Russians tried to pass themselves off as the defenders of liberal ideas against Polish aristocracy; and it was declared that the Polish nobility was in rebellion in order not to be forced to emancipate the serfs. "Russia and the United States," said a French writer of the time, "proclaim the liberty of the serf and the emancipation of the slave, but in return both seek to reduce to slavery all who defend liberty and independence.” Liberty of the press, of speech, of public meetings, even the venerable privilege of habeas corpus, inherited from England, had already been put under the feet of Abraham Lincoln.