CHAPTER XI.

General Lee's private opinion of the defences of Richmond.-A serious communication to the Government, and how it was treated.-Vagaries of President Davis.-Gen. Lee decides that the safety of Richmond lies in raising the siege--Expedition of Early across the Potomac.-Anxiety of Gen. Lee.—He meditates taking command of the force in Maryland.-Retreat of Early.—Gen. Lee next proposes a diversion in the Valley of Virginia.-Failure of this operation.-Constant extension of Grant's left around Richmond.-Period of despondency in the South.—A letter of Gen. Lee on the question of supplies. He proposes bringing in two or three years' supplies from Europe.-Desertion the great evil in the Confederate armies.-Difficulties of dealing with it.-Various letters and protests from Gen. Lee on the subject of discipline.-An angry comment of President Davis.-Gen. Lee a severe disciplinarian, and yet loved by his men.-Anecdote of the General and a onearmed soldier.—Skeleton returns of the army.-The popular clamour against President Davis.-Gen. Lee's quasi acceptance of the position of Commander-in-chief. Nature and peculiar history of this rank in the Confederate armies.-Hopeful views of Gen. Lee.-Project of arming the negroes.-Growth of new hopes for the Confederacy.

ALTHOUGH Gen. Lee had fought, in most respects, a successful campaign, and in all respects a glorious one, he feared now that the safety of Richmond was to be put to a test which he had been long persuaded it could not withstand. As long as the enemy chose to "hammer" on his lines, he had nothing to fear; but the anxiety was that Grant might proceed to envelop the city as far as possible, without attacking fortifications; might turn his attention to the railroads on the south side, and trusting to the slow operations of taking one by one Lee's communications, and wearing out his little army, assure himself of a result which he had not been able to obtain by an action in the field.

It was not long before Grant's operations against Richmond developed the very designs which Gen. Lee had suspected and feared; the bulk of the Federal army being transferred to the south side of the James, and after an abortive attempt to take Petersburg, turning its attention to the railroad lines which fed Richmond, and were, indeed, of vital concern to the army which defended it.

It is not necessary to detail these operations further than to explain the ideas which governed Gen. Lee in his radical change of the defence of the capital from a distant line to one immediately covering Richmond and its outpost in Petersburg. When Grant crossed the James River, and developed his design upon the communications of Richmond, Gen. Lee seriously advised the Richmond authorities that he could not hope to hold the Weldon road; and he frequently thereafter expressed his surprise that the government received this information with so little concern, scarcely exhibiting a sense of danger. Indeed, such was the almost incredible obtuseness of the Confederate President and his advisers, that the reader will scarcely be prepared for the statement that while Lee's little army stood in the desperate straits of Richmond and Petersburg, Mr. Davis was actually proposing a detachment from his thin lines to reinforce Charleston, in answer to letters from the Governor of South Carolina, exclaiming, what was the constant cry from that State, that if Charleston was lost, the Southern Confederacy would be instantly non-extant by that event!

But such insane counsels were ultimately abandoned. As Gen. Lee had predicted, the Weldon Railroad, after repeated attemps of the enemy, was at last seized, and firmly held by him; while Grant extended the left flank of his army to insure its tenure. His operations now appeared, by repeated extensions of the left, to be directed against the Southside and Danville roads, which remained covered by Lee's army. These remaining lines of supply were threatened not only by the extension of Grant's line, but might be operated against by a column able to cut itself loose from its base.

In these circumstances of the danger and difficulty of his communications, and the constant accession of unstinted numbers to the enemy in the design of enveloping his army, which could not possibly keep pace with that of Grant in reinforcements, Gen. Lee decided that the safety of Richmond lay in raising the siege. About the first of July, Washington was uncovered as it had never been before. The Army of the Potomac was south of the James; and that of Hunter, which had been defeated at Lynchburg, had retreated wildly into the mountains of Western Virginia, leaving open the line of march to Washington by the Shenandoah Valley. It was an extraordinary opportunity to strike Washington, or at

least to make such a menace against it as to compel Grant to turn his attention in that direction, and relieve the pressure on the beleaguered lines of Richmond; and Gen. Lee was prompt to avail himself of a great advantage which the chances of war had now cast in his way.

It was a matter of great concern to select, for the important enterprise of a movement against Washington to relieve Richmond, a commander of certain qualifications. Jackson, who would have been the man for the occasion, was dead; Ewell was disabled and out of the field; Longstreet was thought unfit for separate commands; Early, upon whom the choice at last fell, had a mediocre reputation, and only that of a division commander who had fought courageously and tenaciously in the positions to which his superiours had assigned him. With a force consisting of the greater portion of Ewell's old corps, and numbering more than twelve thousand men, Early commenced his march from Lynchburg without hindrance, and on the 7th July reached Frederick in Maryland, from which point he might threaten both Baltimore and Washington.

How large and anxious were Gen. Lee's expectations from this movement may be judged from a letter which he wrote to the War Department, on hearing of Early's arrival at Frederick. He desired of the Secretary of War most especially that the newspapers be requested to say nothing of his movements for some time to come, and that the department would not publish any communication from him which might indicate from its date his "distance from Richmond." But while the commander anxiously awaited further news from Early, expecting the capture of Washington, and the possible necessity of his personal presence on a new and towering theatre of operations, the report came that Early, after having won the battle of Monocacy Bridge, had delayed to attack Washington until overawed by reinforcements, and had retreated across the Potomac satisfied with the success of his spoils.

Gen. Lee was disappointed, more than he cared to express, in the failure of his lieutenant to fulfil the expectations that had been indulged in the direction of Washington; but, determined to give Early another chance, and to persist in his counter movement to relieve the Richmond lines, he reinforced him by two divisions (Kershaw's infantry and Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry), for an active

campaign in the Valley. Nearly a month elapsed without results; Kershaw's division was recalled in consequence of this inaction; and without going further into the details of the Valley campaign, it may be said that it was one of such repeated and decisive victories for the Federals, that it was wholly ineffective as a diversion of the enemy from Richmond, and merely confirmed there the unequal circumstances in which Gen. Lee was left to fight the last battles of the Confederacy.

It would be a tedious narrative to include here the various incidents on the Richmond lines, which took place in the course of many months, and were yet without any remarkable result beyond the constant and growing extension of Grant's left threatening Lee's lines of supply. This indeed was the feature of interest. Lee's army proved itself equal to the repulse of partial assaults; it gained some successes; but it was a serious question how long it could defend a line which, running from northeast of Richmond to southwest of Petersburg, already extended nearly forty miles, and was being constantly stretched to meet Grant's development of his left in the direction of its only remaining communications with the South.

The autumn and winter of 1864 are remarkable for the concern which fell upon the Confederacy as to the question of supplies and men for the prosecution of the war. In this period, Gen. Lee's correspondence with the War Department is very interesting, and indicates how much his foresight extended beyond the circles of the Richmond Administration. At a time when Wilmington was the only practicable seaport through which to obtain foreign supplies, Gen. Lee insisted that it should be used to its utmost capacity. In September he wrote a long letter to the Secretary of War, deprecating the use of this port by the Tallahassee and other cruisers, that went out and ravaged the enemy's commerce, such as the destruction of fishing-smacks, etc. Already he noticed that the presence of the Tallahassee and the Edith at Wilmington had caused the loss of a blockade-runner, worth more than all the vessels destroyed by the Tallahassee, and the port was now guarded by such an additional number of blockaders that it was with difficulty steamers could get in with supplies. He suggested that Charleston, or some other port, be used by the cruisers; and that Wilmington be used exclusively for the importation of supplies-quartermaster's,

commissary's, ordnance, etc. He concluded by advising that supplies enough for two or three years be brought in, so that there might be no apprehension of being destitute hereafter. The admonition and advice of this letter were alike unheeded.

But the military situation was not only desperate with respect to supplies; there was a more painful concern, and one which, as it has not been admitted to sufficient consideration in most accounts of the war, we may state here at some length.

Desertion was the great evil in the Confederate armies, and the most conspicuous of the immediate causes of the downfall and destruction of the Southern Confederacy. The world will be astonished when the extent of this evil is fully and authentically known, and will obtain a new insight into that maladministration which wrecked the Confederate cause, and which is positively without parallel in any modern history of war. There were various and peculiar causes of this evil; among them the injudicious and excessive use of President Davis' prerogative to pardon deserters and men condemned to death under the military law. Mr. Davis was one of those obstinate men, immovable in certain respects, and yet utterly destitute of real vigour of character; he had a weak sentimentalism that was easily approached, and that put him under the dominion of preachers and women, who in the character of humanitarians, friends or relatives, were constantly beseeching the pardon of deserters. The President scarcely ever refused such appeals to his feelings, or strengthened the weak side of his character by public considerations; and the consequence was that the broadcast interposition of the pardoning power soon made it plain to the soldiers of the Confederacy that there was the fullest immunity for desertion. The statement is derived from authorities in the War Department, that in the last two years of the war, an average of two-thirds of the Confederate armies was constantly in the condition of deserters and "absentees!" This statement is sufficient to damn the administration of military affairs in the Southern Confederacy, and is an example of weakness in the authorities that will astonish political mankind. People in Richmond did not doubt the evil; it was constantly before the eyes of the authorities. One could not travel a day in the Confederacy outside the military camps without seeing about the dépôts and cross-roads sauntering soldiers enough to form several regiments. But no hand appeared