CHAPTER XXXIX. HOW SHERMAN'S MARCH THROUGH GEORGIA DEVELOPED A CRISIS IN THE CONFEDERACY.-—GEOGRAPHICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE CONQUEST OF THE SOUTH.-ADDRESS OF THE CONFEDBRATE CONGRESS.-A VULGAR AND FALSE ESTIMATE OF THE ENEMY'S SUCCESS.-MAPS OF CONQUEST AND COBWEB LINES OF OCCUPATION.-GENERAL DECAY OF PUBLIO SPIRIT IN THE CONFEDERACY.-POPULAR IMPATIENCE OF THE WAR.-WANT OF CONFIDENCE IN PRESIDENT DAVIS' ADMINISTRATION.-BEWILDERED ATTEMPTS AT COUNTER-REVOLUTION. -EXECUTIVE MISMANAGEMENT IN RICHMOND.-HOW THE CONSCRIPTION LAW WAS CHEATED.-DESERTERS IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMIES.-PECULIAR CAUSES FOR IT.-ITS FRIGHTFUL EXTENT.-HOW IT WAS NOT A SIGN OF INFIDELITY TO THE CONFEDERATE CAUSE.CONDITION OF THE COMMISSARIAT.-BREAD TAKEN FROM GEN. LEE'S ARMY TO FEED PRISONERS.-ALARMING REDUCTION OF SUPPLIES. MAJOR FRENCH'S LETTER.-LEE'S TROOPS BORDERING ON STARVATION.-EIGHT POINTS PRESENTED TO CONGRESS.-WHAT IT DID. THE CONDITION OF THE CURRENCY.-CONGRESS CURTAILS THE CURRENCY ONE THIRD.-ACT OF 17th February, 1864.-SECRETARY SEDDON GIVES THE coup de grace TO THE CURRENCY.-HIS NEW STANDARD OF VALUE IN WHEAT AT FORTY DOLLARS A BUSIIEL.-DISORDERS OF THE CURRENCY AND COMMISSARIAT AS CONTRIBUTING TO DESERTIONS.-IMPRACTICABILITY OF ALL REMEDIES FOR DESERTIONS.-NO DISAFFECTION IN THE CONFEDERACY, EXCEPT WITH REFERENCE TO FAULTS OF THE RICHMOND ADMINISTRATION. -PRESIDENT DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERATE CONGRESS, &0.—THREE PRINCIPAL MEASURES IN CONGRESS DIRECTED AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.-REMONSTRANCE OF THE VIRGINIA DELEGATION WITH REFERENCE TO THE CABINET.-RESIGNATION OF MR. SEDDON.—PERSONAL RELATIONS BETWEEN PRESIDENT DAVIS AND GEN. LEE.-WHY THE LATTER DECLINED TO TAKE COMMAND OF ALL THE ARMIES OF THE CONFEDERACY.-WANT OF SELFASSERTION IN GEN. LEE'S CHARACTER. WHY HIS INFLUENCE IN THE GENERAL AFFAIRS OF THE CONFEDERACY WAS NEGATIVE.-RECRIMINATION BETWEEN PRESIDENT DAVIS AND CONGRESS.-A SINGULAR ITEM IN THE CONSCRIPTION BUREAU.-REMARK OF MRS. DAVIS TO A CONFEDERATE SENATOR.—THE OPPOSITION LED BY SENATOR WIGFALL. HIS TERRIBLE AND ELOQUENT INVECTIVES.-A CHAPTER OF GREAT ORATORY LOST TO THE WORLD.-AN APPARENT CONTRADICTION IN THE PRESIDENT'S CHARACTER. THE INFLUENCE OF SMALL FAVOURITES. '—JOHN M. DANIEL'S OPINION OF PRESIDENT DAVIS' TEARS.-INFLUENCE OF THE PRESIDENT ALMOST ENTIRELY GONE IN THE LAST PERIODS OF THE WAR.-THE VISIBLE GOV. BROWN, of georgia, wAS USED BY IT.-ITS PERSISTENT DESIGN UPON THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE.-HOW IT WAS REBUFFED.-HEROIO CHOICE OF VIRGINIA.-PRESIDENT 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 mem orable 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 occupation 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 bewildered 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 purposes thwarted, and its efforts brought to nought, by an incompetent government. 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 eye 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 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 incurring an excess of expenditure, which, if invested in corn and transportation, would have moved ten millions of bread rations from Augusta to Richmond. At the opening of the campaign, Gen. Lee had urged the importance of having at least thirty days' reserves of provisions at Richmond and at Lynchburg. We have just seen how impossible it was to meet his views. It is a curious commentary on the alleged cruelty of Confederates to their prisoners, that in the winter of 1863-4, our entire reserve in Richmond of thirty thousand barrels of flour was consumed by Federal prisoners of war, and the bread taken from the mouths of our soldiers to feed them! In the course of the campaign there had been the most serious reductions of supplies. The exhaustion of Virginia, the prevalence of drought and the desolation of the lower Valley and the contiguous Piedmont counties by the enemy, reduced her yield very considerably. The march of a Federal army through the heart of Georgia, and the possession of Savannah as a secure base for raids and other military operations, was, of course, calculated to reduce her yield. The amount of tithe had proved a very imperfect guide to the quantity of meat that might be obtained under its indications. Thus, in South Carolina, only two and one-half per cent. of the sum of the tithe was reported as purchased. In Virginia the supply even of bread was practically exhausted, and but little more could be expected, even after the next wheat crop came in. The present corn crop was no better, probably worse, than the last. Add to this the destruction of whole districts by Federal armies, the effect of calling out the whole reserve force, and subsequently of revoking and putting into the field or in camp all detailed farmers at the period of seeding wheat, the absconding of numerous negroes under the fear of being placed in our armies, and it was apparent that no bread could be expected from Virginia. In November, 1864, President Davis applied to the Commissary General to know if his magazines were increasing or diminishing. He sent back word that they were diminishing, and to give him more accurate information forwarded the following statement, made in the previous month, disclosing the alarming fact, that thirty million requisitions were unfilled. Col. L. B. Northrop, Commissary-General of Subsistence: BUREAU OF SUBSISTENCE. RICHMOND, October 18, 1864. COLONEL I have the honour to submit for your consideration the inclosed memor andum of meats on hand at the various depots and posts in the Confederate States, from which you will see at a glance the alarming condition of the commissariat. Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi are the only States where we have an accumulation, and from these all the armies of the Confederacy are now subsisting, to say nothing of the pris |