iRlVAL ADMINISTRATIONS |y 
 
 RICHMOND AND WASHINGTON 
 
 IN 
 
 DECEMBER, 1863. 
 
 o> 
 
 By E. A. POLLARD, 
 
 m Author of '/The First and Seeond Years of the War," m 
 
 
 uy 
 
 Ptccata Mcentium nota esse oporiet tt expedite — JcttTlNlAM. 
 
 RICHMOND: 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR. 
 
 1864. 
 
 
George Washington Flowers 
 Memorial Collection 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 ESTABLISHED BY THE 
 
 FAMILY OF 
 
 COLONEL FLOWERS 
 
<% "§M ^kmostraftm 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 !.__« Want of Capacity" in tiie Confederate Administra- 
 tion. 
 
 » 
 
 II.— Jefferson Davis— Early Prognostications of the 
 War. 
 
 MI.— The Confederate Finances. 
 
 I\r .—TnE Military Situation in the Confederacy.— Dem- 
 
 AGOGUEISM. 
 
 V. — Lincoln's "Peace" Proclamation. 
 VI.— The Slavery Question in the War. 
 VII— History of thr "Retaliation" Policy. 
 VIII— The Last Hope, 
 
PEEFxlTORY. 
 
 Owing to the extreme scarcity of paper and printing facilities 
 • in the Confederacy, the author of "The First and Second Years 
 of the War" has arranged for the printing of his Third Volume 
 in England, and is uncertain of the time of its appearance in the 
 Soiith. The following pages constitute a single chapter of the un- 
 published manuscript of this volume. These pages, thus discon- 
 nected, are not intended to advertise a forthcoming work, or to 
 . be violently imposed upon the public attention ; but the author 
 has supposed that they contained certain grave considerations, 
 which have a present and immediate interest for the Southern 
 public, apart from their general relations to the history of the 
 
 war. 
 
 Richmond, January, 1864. 
 
THE 
 
 ♦ 
 
 RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS: 
 
 RICHMOND AND WASHINGTON 
 
 IN 
 
 DECEMBER, 1863. # 
 
 By E. A. POLLARD, 
 
 Author of .'-The First m\i Second Years of ibe War/' 
 
 ' Pefrata ncrentiura uctn esse vportet *t txptdit" — Jcsnxus, 
 
 RICHMOND: 
 
 PUBL1SHKI) FOR THE- AFTHOR. 
 % 18G4. 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 i. : 
 
 At the* meeting of 'the Confederate Congress, in Decem- 
 ber, 1863, President Davis said: "We now know that the only 
 " reliable hope for peace is in the vigour of our resistance, 
 " while- the cessation of their" [the enemy's] " hostility is only 
 "•to be expected from the pressure of their necessities." The 
 Confederate Administration had at last arrived at the correct 
 comprehension of the war. But it had reached this conclusion 
 only after a period of nearly three years of ignorance, short- 
 sighted conceit and preversity. 
 
 The careful and candid reader of the pages of two volumes of 
 the history of the war, by this writer, will bear him witness that 
 at no time has he reflected upon the patriotism or the public 
 integrity of President Davis. The accusation, which has run 
 through these volumes, is simply this : want of capacity in the 
 administration of public affairs. 
 
 ii. 
 
 • It is not possible that any historian of this war can overlook 
 certain admirable qualities of the President of the Confede- 
 racy : his literary abilities, his spruce English, • his ascetic 
 morals, the purity of his private life, and ,the extraordinary 
 facility of his manners. But he was not a statesman ; he had 
 no administrative capacities ;-he lacked that indispensable and 
 practical element of success in all political administrations — 
 knowledge of the true value of men ; and he was — probably, 
 unconsciously through his vanity — accessible to favourites. In 
 the old government, Mr. Davis had never been accounted as a 
 statesman, but was quite as obtrusive as most of the public men 
 of that day. He it was, of Southern politicians, who declared 
 in a public letter, in 1858, that the "Kansas Conference bill" 
 
2 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 was "the triumph of all for which we contended."* He had 
 failed to see the origin and occasion of the revolution which he 
 assumed to. conduct. 
 
 His choice of favourites in the field, had been as unapt as his 
 selection of political advisers in the Cabinet.* This President 
 who depreciated Price as a militiaman,* and held (or probably 
 affected) a light opinion of Beauregard, was convinced that 
 Pemberton was a genius who should be raised by a single stroke 
 o£ patronage from the obscurity of a major to the position of 
 a: Lieutenant General :\ recognized Heth as a young Napoleon ; 
 selected Lo veil as the natural guardian of the Mississippi ; de- 
 clared that Holmes, who had let the enemy slip out of his fingers 
 at Richmond, was the appointed deliverer of Missouri and Ar- 
 kansas, and competent to take charge of the destinies of an 
 empire ; and prophesied with peculiar emphasis of mystery, but 
 
 * The obstinate adhesion of President Davis to his favourites was forcibly 
 illustrated in the case of Pemberton." The criticism of the public had no 
 charity for 'this commander, and his recent campaign culminating in the sur- 
 render of Vicksburg, was denounced by the intelligent as a series of, blun- 
 ders, and by others less just and more passionate as the device of treason. 
 It was argued that he had exposed Bowen with only four thousand men at 
 Grand Gulf — a position impregnable to the enemy if it had been defended by 
 sufficient numbers. It Was stated that on the more unfortunate day of the 
 Big Black he had denied the importunate entreaties of Bowen for reinforce- 
 ments, who dispatched seven or eight couriers for them in the course of the 
 unequal battle. It was stated that he declined to provision Vicksburg in 
 prospect of a sie^e, and that when one of the Confederate Senators from Mis- 
 sissippi pointed out to him vast supplies in certain counties of the S»ate 
 accessible to his garrison, he dismissed the advice with a haughtiness that 
 almost amounted to personal insult. 
 
 As proof of^ the abundance of the country around Vicksburg, we have 
 Grant's official report of his Mississippi campaign, in wnich he states that 
 with a view of rapid/movement and surprise, having calculated that twenty 
 days would place him before Vicksburg, he permitted his troops to take only 
 four days' provisions, trusting to the country for the other sixteen days' sup- 
 ply, and, in fact, supplied his army {50,000 men) from the country lying about, 
 the line of his march. * . - 
 
 The statement that the garrison of Vicksburg was surrendered on account 
 §f an inexorable distress, in which the soldiers had to feed on mules, with 
 the occasional luxury of rats, is either to be taken as a designing falsehood, 
 or as the crudities of that foolish newspaper romance so common in the war. 
 In neither case does, it merit reputation. A citizen of Vicksburg declares that 
 the only foundation for the rat story is that a pie spiced with this Vermin was 
 seived up in some of the officers' messes as a practical joke, and that for days 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS, ' 8 
 
 a few weeks before the session of Congress, in a public speech 
 in a Southern city, .that Bragg by' that time would be in the 
 heart of Tennessee, and on the pinnacles of victory ! 
 
 The civil administration of Mr. Davis had fallen to a low ebb. 
 There are certain minds which cannot aee h'ow want of capacity 
 in our government, official shiftlessness and the mismanagement 
 of public affairs yet consist with the undeniable facts of the 
 successes of our arms, and the great achievement's of the Con- 
 federacy. But it is possible that thesfc two conditions may 
 eonsist^-that, in a revolution, the valour and determination of 
 a people may make # considerable amends for the faults of it* 
 governors. If the history of this war has proved one proposi- 
 tion clearly it is this : that in all its subjects of congratulation , 
 the "statesmanship" of Richmond has little part or lot. Let 
 those who deny the justice of this" historical judgment, which 
 refuses to attribute to the official authorities of this government 
 such success as we have had in this war say, what they have con- 
 tributed to it. 
 
 after tfie surrender he himself tiad dined on excellent bacon from Pember- 
 ton 's stores. 
 
 Whatever may have been the real merits of the many'accusations of which 
 Pemberton was the subject, these at least indicated that he did not command 
 the confidence of his troops or of any considerable portion of the public; and 
 this deficiency alone sheuh.4 have suggested to the President the prudence ot 
 x change of commanders and dissuaded him from his obstinate preference of 
 a favourite.* But it had none of this effect. The Legislature of Mississippi 
 solicited the removal of Pemberton. Private- delegations from Congress en- 
 treated the President to forego his personal prejudices and defer to the public 
 wish. But Mr. Davis had that conceit of opinion which opposition readily 
 confirms; and the effect" of these remonstrances was only to increase his ob- 
 stinacy and intensify his fondness for his favourite. To some of them he re-' 
 p4ied that Pemberton was "n great military genius" — not appreciated by the 
 public, and destined on propor occasion to astonish it. Indeed, the President 
 went further than mere opposition to the public sentiment. He defied and 
 almost insulted it; for after the disaster of Vicksburg, Pemberton, with tfce 
 public reproaches clinging to him, and public sentiment clamoring in vain for 
 an inquiry into his conduct, was ostentatiously entertained as the President'.-, 
 guest in Richmond, and giver, the distinction of one of his suite in the subse- 
 ^nent official visit of the President to our armies in the West! It was said 
 by Mr. Fo<*e, in public session of Congress, that when the President, with jl 
 peculiar hardihood, essayed to ride down the lines of our troops, with Pem- 
 "berton at bis side, angry exclamations assailed them, and passed from lip :.. 
 lip 6€ the soldiers. p 
 
4 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 The evidences of the "statesmanship" of Richmond, were 
 not to be found in our foreign relations : these were absurdities, 
 They were not tp be found in our provisions for the war : these 
 were make-shifts from month to month. They were not to be 
 found in our financial calculations : these had proved tfce most 
 ridiculous failures in the- monetary annals of the world. ' We 
 owe this melancholy confession to history, that we do not know 
 of any real and substantial particulars in which the administra- 
 tion of Mr. Davis has contributed to this war. The reverse of 
 the proposition need not be repeated here. 
 
 It is mortifying, indeed, to look back up*on the currents of 
 our history, to observe the blindness and littleness of mind, the 
 conceit, the preversity, the short-sighted management, on all 
 which we have drifted into this present vastness of war and 
 depths of distress. In Montgomery at the period of the pro- 
 visional inauguration of the Confederacy, any one who had the 
 Hardihood to insist upon the probability of a war, became a butt- 
 of raillery or Jhe object of suspicion. The war once begun, the 
 next idea in the minds of the Confederate leaders was, that it 
 was to be dispatched in a few months by mere make-shifts «of 
 armies and money, and with the scant supply of munitions al- 
 ready on hand. Months intervened between Lincoln's declara- 
 tion of war and the actual establishment of the blockade. But 
 no use was made of this golden opportunity, and our importa- 
 tions of army supplies from Europe during all these months, ac- 
 tually may be counted in a few thousand stand of small arms, 
 Secretary Mallory laughed off contractors in New Orleans, who 
 offered to sell to the government a" large amount of navy sup- 
 plies. Judah P. Benjamin, at the head of the War Department, 
 * wrote to a friend in the firsi winter of the war,- that within sixty* 
 days the country would be at peace. Later still, in the winter 
 of 1862, President Davis, in a speech before the Legislature of 
 Mississippi, had pronounced the solemn opinion that <he war 
 would soon come to an end. Yet we find the same eminent per- 
 sonage now declaring to the Congress of 1863, his belief in an 
 indefinite prolongation of the, war, and his despair of«his many 
 brilliant former prospects of peace, through instrumentalities, 
 other than that of our arms. 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 5 
 
 Able and candid journals of the North, have repeatedly con- 
 fessed that they were puzzled by the extraordinary want of fore- 
 sight and judgment displayed by the Confederate leaders, in 
 eheir calculation at different periods of the war of the course 
 likely to' be pursued by Europe and the North. These errours 
 might have been expected from men^)f little education, to whom 
 self-interest in its lowest sense was the key to all political pro- 
 blems, but by no means from persons who had studied politics 
 in books. " The notion," said tl;e New York Times, " that the 
 Zi North, being a commercial community, devoted to the pursuit 
 "of gain, was, for that reason, sure not to fight, was rather the 
 19 conclusion of a backwoodsman than of a student. The lesson 
 " of history is that commercial communities are amongst the 
 " most pugnacious and ambitious and most obstinate of bcllig- 
 " erents : witness Carthage, Venice, Genoa, Holland and Eng- 
 land." 
 
 * The utter failure of the calculations of the Confederate Ad- 
 ministration, regarding France and England, had exhibited a 
 hasty and passionate reasoning, of which Mr. Davis and his asso- 
 ciates might well be ashamed. The idea is ludicrous now that at 
 the very beginning of the American revolution, France and 
 England, with their centuries of vast and varied experience, in 
 peace and war, would fling themselves into a convulsion which 
 their great politicians easily saw was the most tremendous one 
 of 'modern times. 'Yet this idea was entertained by President 
 Davis ; and as proof of it, the Confederate commissioners were 
 instructed to apply to Earl jRussell for recognition in England 
 after the first battle of Manassas ! 
 
 Af the commencement of the war, cotton was pronounced 
 " King;" and the absurd and puerile idea was put forward by 
 the politicians of the Davis school, that the great and illustrious 
 power of v England would submit to the ineffable humiliation of 
 acknowledging its dependency on the infant Confederacy of the 
 South, and the subserviency of its empire, its political interests 
 and its pride to a single article of trade that was grown in Ame- 
 rica ! And what indeed is. the sum of advantages which the. 
 Confederacy drew from the royal resources of cotton ? It is 
 true that these resources could not compel the political interests 
 
6 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 and pride of England. But, properly used, they might have 
 accomplished much for the interests of the Confederacy. In 
 point of fact they accomplished nothing. For one year after * 
 the war commenced, the blockade was so slight that the whole • 
 of the cotton might have been shipped 'to Europe, and there 
 sold at two shillings sterling a pound, giving the government, 
 purchasing at twenty cents, a clear profit of six hundred mil- 
 lions of dollars ! We may even suppose one-fifth of this cap- 
 tured by the «nemy, and we would still have had a balance in 
 our favour which would have enabled us to have drained every 
 bank in Europe of its specie ! Or if we had drawn for.this sum 
 as we needed it, our Treasury notes Would have been equal \o 
 g6ld, and confidence in our currency would have been unshaken 
 
 and universal. 
 
 ■ •» « 
 
 The Confederacy had thus the element at ready -hand for the 
 structure of one of the most successful schemes of finance in 
 the world. But the government was too grossly ignorant to see 
 it. The purchase of the cotton to the government was decried 
 by Mr. Memminger, .as a scheme of " soup-house legislation ;" 
 and the new government was started without a basis of credit '; 
 without a system of revenue * on the monstrous delusion that 
 money might be manufactured at will tfut of paper, and that a 
 naked " promise to pay," was all sufficient for the wants of the 
 war ! 
 
 It is to be frankly admitted that the South commenced, .the 
 war with financial advantages which the North did 'not have — 
 that is, without reference to commercial incidents of the block- 
 ade, but with respect to the sustention of jts credit at home. 
 The South had the cotton and the tobacco. It had the unbound- 
 ed sympathies of its people. It had larger taxable values per 
 capita than any other country in the world. It is 'not possible 
 that with these advantages it could have wrecked its credit with 
 its Qwn people, unless through a g#at want of capacity in the 
 administration of the government. It is not possible, that with 
 these advantages, its currency should have declined with its own 
 people, ten times faster than that of the North with its people, 
 ' unless through a gross mismanagement of public affairs. These 
 are logical conclusions which are no^ to be disputed. 
 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 III. 
 
 At the organization of the permanent government of the Con- 
 federacy, in February 1865, President Davis had made the moat 
 extravagant congratulations to the country, on our financial con- 
 dition in comparison with that of the North. In less than eigh- 
 teen months thereafter, when gold was quoted in New York at 
 twenty-five per centprenfium, it was selling in Richmond at nine 
 hundred per cent premium ; and by the time that # the Confede- 
 rate Congress met, in December 1863, gfld in Richmond was 
 wt)rth about two thousand per cent premium, and was publicly 
 sold; one for twenty in.Confederate notes ! Such had been the 
 results of the financial wisdom of the Confederacy. It had 
 been dictated by the President, who advised Congress (as late as 
 August 1862) -to authorize illimitable issues of Treasury notes, ' 
 without fear of their depreciation, and aggravated, no doubt, by 
 the ignorance of his Secretary, who invented the legerdemain 
 of " funding," that had given the last stab to the currency, aad 
 who opened the, doors of the treasury to brokers, blockade-run- 
 ners and the vast tribes of those who lived on the depreciation 
 of the public credit-* •• 
 
 * The experiments of Mr. JMemminger on the currency was the signal of 
 multiplied and rapid depreciation. While the eccentric and pious Secretary 
 was figuring out impossible schemes of making money, or jansacking the 
 book-stores for works on Religious controversy, unprincipled brokers in the 
 Confederacy were undermining the currency with a zeal for the instruction 
 of their country not less than that of the Yankees. The assertion admits of 
 some qualification. Sweeping remarks in history are generally unjust. 
 Among those engaged in the business of banking and exchange in the South, 
 there were undoubtedly some enlightened and public-spirited men who had 
 Keen seduced by the example or' constrained by the competition of meaner 
 and more avaricious men of the same profession, to array themselves against 
 the currency, and to commit offences from which'they would have shrunk in 
 horrour, had they not been disguised by the casuistry of commerce and gair?. 
 
 It was generally thought in the South reprehensible to refuse the national 
 currency in the payment of debts. Yet the broker, who demanded eighteen 
 of twenty dollars in this currency for one" in gold, really was guilty of so 
 many times refusing the Confederate money. It was accounted shocking for. 
 citizens in the Sryith to speculate in soldiers 1 clothing and bread. Yet tlie 
 broker, who demanded twenty prices for gold, the representative of all values,' 
 
i 2H8 KIVAL ^ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 Of all the features of maladministration in the Confederacy > 
 which we have unwillingly traced, that of the currency was, 
 * certainly, the most marked, and, perh«,]ps, the most vital. No- 
 thing could be more absurd than the faith of Mr. Davis and Mr. 
 Metnminger in the virtues of paper money, and no empiricism 
 more ignorant and destructive than that wbich made the mere 
 emission of paper issues a system of revenue. L the old gov- 
 ernment, we had had many emphatic lessons ob the subject of 
 
 speculated alike in ever^ *«eee3*ary in xh.9 country. £fow wns this the great- 
 -est of their offences. Wjrh r.UfUrtrpN • d aau 1 • • fe$s brokers in the Con- 
 federacy exposed the currency &t *he North fee sale and demanded for it ten 
 hundred per cent, premium over that of 'he Confederacy! This £.ct of be»e* 
 fit to the Yankees was openly allowed by truj government. A bill had been 
 introduced in Congress Jo piofcbit this traiEe and to extirpate Shis infamous 
 anomaly in our history; but k failed of enactment, and its.failusre can only bs 
 attributed to the grossest stup : dity, or to sinister influences of the most dis- 
 honourable kind; The traffic was immensely profitable. State bonds nr.J. 
 bank bills to the amount of i^any millions were sent North by the brokers, anj 
 the rates of discount were readily submitted to when the returns were madi 
 in Yankee paper money, which, in the Richmond shops, was worth in Con- 
 federate notes ten dollars for one. 
 
 .One— but only one — cause of the depreciation of the Confederate currency > 
 was illicit trade, ffhad done more to demoralize the Confederacy than any- 
 thing else. The inception of this trade was easily winked at. by the Confed 
 erate authorities- it commenced with paltry importations across the Potomac,,: 
 it was said the country wanted medicines, swrgical instruments and a number, 
 of trifles, and that trade with the Yankees in these could result in no serious 
 harm. But by the enlarged license ©f the government it soon became' an in- 
 famy and a curse to the Confederacy. What was* a petty traiSc in* its com- 
 mencement soon expanded into a shameless trade, which corrupted the pa- 
 triotism of the country, constituted an anomaly in the history of belligerents, 
 and reflected lasting disgrace upon the honesty and good sense of oar. gov- 
 ernment. .The country had taken a solemn resolution to burn the cotton in 
 advance of the enemy; but the conflagration of this staple soon came to be a 
 rare event; instead of being committed tq the flames it was- spirited to Yan- 
 kee markets. Nor were these operations always disguised. Some commer- 
 cial houses in the Confederacy counted their gains by millions of dollars 
 
 t s;nce the war, through the favour of the government in allowing ihena to 
 port cotton at pleasure. The beneficiaries of this trade contributed freely 
 to public charities and did certain favours to the government; but their gifts* 
 were but the parings of immense gains; and often those who were named 
 by weak and credulous people or by interested flatterers as public-spirted citi- 
 s and patriotic donors, were, in fact, the most unmitigated extortioners- 
 and the vilest leeches on the body politic. — " The Second*Tear of the War" — 
 
 ' 'pp. 304-5. ' 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 9 
 
 •r money. Indeed it is a curious and interesting fact, that 
 m sixty years of our past history, the banking institutions of 
 America had been, more or less, in a state of suspension for one 
 third of the time. 
 
 But despite the protest of historical facts, against all systems 
 of paper expansion, Mr. Memminger had succeeded by the time 
 of the meeting of Congress, in putting afloat some .seven hun- 
 dred millions of currency ; although at another time, he himself 
 had declared that the business of the country could not conve- 
 niently absorb more than one hundred and fifty millions.* And 
 even that estimate of absorption was ridiculously excessive. It 
 was so for this particular reason : that in the state of war, with 
 k.s commerce cut off by the blocade* with no merchant ships, 
 with few manufactures, with few enterprises open to capital, the 
 fcouth afforded but little scope for the profitable employment of 
 it3 currency. The difficulty was that of stagnant capital a3 
 well, as that of an expanded currency. 
 
 At least one reason for the .comparative financial prosperity 
 of the North, during the war*, was its capacity of absorbing 
 large amounts of currency in the various Amotions of its active 
 commercial life : in its trade open with all the world ; in its 
 shipping whitening every sea in its immense internal trade, 
 borne over immense lines of railroad and navigable waters ; iri 
 its manufactures, enjoying the monopoly given them by a tariff*, 
 which shut out foreign competition ; in its stocks which made 
 fortunes by the miHion in Wall street, f 
 
 But the agricultural South was inundated .with a currency 
 fcr which there was no outlet except in that pernicious and un- 
 productive speculation whose sphere of trade is within itself, 
 
 * Before the war the paper money of the whole country, North and South, 
 was two hundred and twelve millions; the gold and silver, say one hundred 
 
 •and fifty millions — total circulation, three hundred and sixty-two millions, 
 f The hey-day of "Wall Street" is thus described in a New York paper, 
 
 *(A.ugust, 1863)-. " Stocks have advanced on an average fully three hundred 
 percent. For example, jhe Erie formerly sold for five; it is now one hun- 
 dred and twenty. The Galena«and other roads of the same kind, whiqh- were 
 down to thirty and forty, are now up to one hundred and thirty and one hun- 
 dred and forty. The Harlem *railroad, that nobody would take at six, has 
 risen to one hundred and seventy. Formerly the average receipts of the Erie 
 
10 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 and whose operations can be only those of engrossing and ex- 
 tortion. The evils of the expanded currency of the Confedera- 
 cy, were not only financial ; they were also moral. The super- 
 abundance of* paper money was the occasion of a wild specula- 
 tion, which corrupted the patriotism of the country ; introduced 
 extravagance and licentiousness into private life ; bestowed for- 
 tune upon.the most undeserving ; and, above all, brec^ the most 
 grave and dangerous discontents in the army. As long as there 
 was a spirit of mutual sacrifice and mutual accommodation in 
 the war our soldiers were content and cheerful. But when they 
 had to compare their condition — the hardships of the camp ; the 
 pittance of eleven dollars a month, that could scarcely buy a pair 
 of socks ; the poverty of ftie dear home left behind them — with 
 the easy and riotous wealth of those* who had kept out of the 
 army merely to wring money out of the necessity and distress 
 of the country $ who, in snug shops in Richmond, made thous- 
 ands of dollars a day, or, by a single stroke of speculation, be- 
 came rich for life ; it'is not to be wondered that bitter conclu- 
 sions should have been drawn from the contrast, and that the 
 soldier should have* given his bosom to the bullets, with less 
 alacrity and zeal, when he reflected that his martyrdom was to 
 protect a large class of men grfcvn rich on his necessities, aad 
 * that too with the compliance and countenance of the govern- 
 ment he defended ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 At the period of the assembling of Congress, the military 
 
 yailroad were live millions; now they are eleven millions. The receipts pf 
 the New York Central formerly averaged seven millions; now they average 
 eleven ami a half millions. Formerly the Hudson^ River nev^r could pay its 
 debts ^ this year it is making thirty per cent.. The Fort Wayne road formerly 
 received two and a half millions annually ; its receipts this year are five mil- 
 lions. The Central Illinois increased its receipts last week, by fifty thausaii^ 
 dollars, and it will earn this month four hundred thousand dollars." 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 11 
 
 situation in the Confederacy, which in the early part of I860 
 had encouraged, not without apparent reasons, hopes of an early 
 and honourable peace, had become overshadowed, critical, and, 
 to some extent, truly alarming. At the time of J;he fall of 
 Vicksburg, the enemy had also obtained an important and per- 
 manent success in Arkansas. The greater portion of the South- 
 west he had now overrun. Missouri, Kentucky and North- 
 western Virginia, were exclusively occupied by the forces of the 
 enemy. North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama, were 
 partially invaded by him. He had passed the barrier of the 
 Cumberland mountains, established his dominion in East Tennes- 
 see, and from his lines in the central "West, now hoped to inun- 
 date South Carolina, Georgia and South Alabama.' 
 
 In the *face of this critical military situation, came the as- 
 tounding disclosure from the Confederate Secretary of War, Mr. 
 James Seddon, that the effective force of the army was " not 
 more than a half, never two-thirds of the numbers in ~the 
 ranks." . 
 
 In stating this deplorable fact, the Secretary avoided attribu- 
 ting it to'its paramount causes — the fault of his own adminis- 
 tration ; the remissness of discipline ; the weak shunning of the 
 death-penalty in our armies, and that paltry quackery which 
 proposed to treat the great evil of desertion with " proclama- 
 tions" and patriotic appeals. He did wnat was worse than this 
 insincerity ; for he proposed to repair that evil of absenteeism, 
 wiiich the government itself had occasioned, by new and violent 
 measures, to replenish the army. These were an extension of 
 the conscription, which endangered the exhaustion of the mili- 
 tary reserves of the country ; — the ex post facto annulment of 
 all contracts for substitution, which was to the scandal of the 
 moral world, and to the lively dissatisfaction of more than sev- 
 enty thousand persons, many of whom were indispensable in civil 
 employments, and by their wealth and social position, command- 
 ed an influence which the government could not afford to de- 
 spise; — and, to crown all, the supercedure of all exemptions by a 
 system of details in the War Department, which would have 
 transferred the question 6f all relief with respect to the burdens 
 of the war, from the proper constitutional jurisdiction and col- 
 
12 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 lective wisdom 6f Congress, to the exclusive discretion, capricfc 
 or malice of a single official. 
 
 Such measures were finished pieces of demagogUeism. The 
 various propositions made to Congress for further military drafts 
 at the* expense of public faith, and the gravest interests of the 
 citizen and producer was calculated to find favour, of course, in 
 the army, which, as designing politicians knew, contained the 
 great body of voters in the country and was destined to hold the 
 balance of political power in the Confederacy. 
 
 The vice of our public men was an inordinate passion for aa 
 ephemeral and worthless popularity. The entire legislation of 
 the country, Confederate and State; was demoralized by a pe- 
 culiar demagogueism. All the legislative bodies of the country 
 were filled with schemes of agrarianism for the benefit of the 
 soldier, and assaults on. the most important civil rights and in- 
 terests at the instance of the blind passions of the army. 
 
 The, annulment, by the Confederate Congress, of contracts 
 heretofore concluded for military substitutes^ was an act of un- 
 paralleled infamy. In making the assertion that the substitu- 
 tion wasliot a contract, but a privilege accorded by the authori- 
 ties, the government adopted the argument of the 'despot: to 
 this effect that the rights of the' people is the pleasure of the 
 sovereign, to be enjoyed with becoming humility. In assuming 
 to break tlie contract as to the principal, and, at the same time, 
 maintain it in force against the substitute, the government stul- 
 tified itself, and violated the plainest and justest of legal max- 
 ims, that a contract broken on one side, is broken on all sides. 
 In attempting this violence in the face of the admitted fact that 
 nearly half of the army Were out of the ranks, the government 
 avoided the plain duty of replenishing the army with these ab- 
 sentees ; proposed to replace seasoned veterans by raw malcon- 
 tents ^ and, for a nominal accession to its military forces, to 
 sacrifice recorded pledges-; to wound the confidence and affec- 
 tions of the people; and to perpetrate a great moral evil, for 
 which the compensation in any practical benefit was utterly dis- 
 proportionate. 
 
 If such an act of perfidy had been accomplished by* the Lin- 
 coln government, the Southern newspapers wauld have exclaim- 
 ed against it as an unequalled example of despotism. But when 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 13 ' 
 
 it was perpetrated by their own government, Southern jouri: . 
 witlj few honourable exceptions, were base enough to sustain %r 
 disguise it ; and one Southern Senator, at least — a man of the 
 name of Brown — was ready in his official seat, and in the secu- 
 rity of his own exemption from military seyice^ to bully the 
 ^people with an insufferable insolence and to flourish from the 
 shelter of his parliamentary position, the vulgar and detestable 
 threat of " military power." 
 
 But it is not necessary to pursue here, the legislation of the 
 Confederate Congress, on military subjects. We have forberne 
 to say here that the condition of our arms was desperate : it was 
 critical, but there' was no real occasion for despair, or for that* 
 violent anxiety which approaches it. There was yet much room 
 for hope. We have stated that the amount of absenteeism hi 
 the army was, at least, in great part, the fault of the authori- 
 ties, and.it is therefore not to be taken as the indication of 
 decay in the spirit of our soldiery. That spirit was yet brave 
 and resolute. The displacement of Bragg from his command; 
 which was at last unwillingly made by the President, had com- 
 posed a dangerous discontent in the armies of the West, and 
 was the occasion of the re-organization of our forces there, and 
 a reassurance of the spirits of the troops. In Virginia, Lee still 
 hekl the enemy at bay, and possessed the unanimous and enthu- 
 siastic confidence of the country and the army. At Charleston. 
 Beauregard had checked the enemy, broken the line of his suc- 
 cesses on the coast, and was advanced even in his former repu- 
 tation as a skillful commander. If the prospect was chequered* 
 in the West, it was without a serious shadow in the East ; and, 
 although a large portion of the Confederacy had passed into tje 
 possession of the enemy, the general condition, at least, exter- 
 nally, was not so serious as when, in 1862, Richmond was threat- 
 ened, and there were two hundred 'and ten thousand Federal 
 soldiers in Virginia alone. 
 
 . • v.. 
 
 In the meantime there came ja new and powerful appeal to the 
 patriotism and resolution of the Confederacy. The Yankee 
 
14 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 Congress had assembled simultaneously with that of the Con- 
 federacy, and, for the first time irT the war, the conditions i^pon 
 which peace would be made with the South were officially an- 
 nounced. They were .contained in the message and proclama- 
 tion of Abraham Lincoln. * They were briefly these : the forci- 
 
 *'The following are the material portions. of this remarkable proclamation : 
 Whereas, In and by the Constitution of the United States, it is provided 
 that the President shall have power to give reprieves and pardon3 for otfenees 
 agaiustthe United States, except in cases of impeachment, and 
 
 Whereas, a rebellion now exists whereby .the loyal State Governments of 
 several States have for a long time been subverted, aifd many persons have 
 committed and are now guilty of treason against the United States, and 
 
 Whereas, with reference to said rebellion and treason, laws have been en- 
 acted by Congress declaring forfeitures and confiscations of property, and lib- 
 eration of slaves, all upon terms and conditions therein stated; and also de- 
 claring that the President was thereby authorized at any time thereafter, by 
 proclamation to extend to persons who niay have participated in the existing 
 rebellion in any State, or part thereof, pardon and amnesty, with such excep- 
 tions, and at such times and on such conditions as he may deem expedientfbr 
 the public welfare, and . "• 
 
 Whereas, the Congressional declaration for limited and conditional pardon, 
 accords with the well-established judicial exposition of the pardoning power. 
 and 
 
 Whereas, with reference to the said rebellion the President of the United 
 States has issued several proclamations and provisions in regard to the libe- 
 ration of slaves, and 
 
 Whereas, it is now desired by sornje persons heretofore engorged in said re- 
 bellion, to assume their allegiance to the United States, and to reinaugurate 
 loyal State Governments within and for their respective^ States; 
 
 Therefore, I Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, 
 declare and make known to all persons who have directly or by implication 
 participated in the existing rebellion, except as hereinafter excepted, that a 
 full pardon is hereby granted to them and each of them, with restoration of 
 ail rights of property except as to slaves, and in property eases where the rigkii 
 of third parties shall have intervened, and tipon the condition that every such 
 person shall take and subscribe p.h oath, and thenceforward keep and main, 
 tain said oath inviolate, and which oath shall be registered for permanent pre- 
 servation, and shall be of the tenor and effect'following, to wit : 
 
 '• I, , do solemnly swear in the presence ©f Almighty God, that I will 
 
 henceforth faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the Uni- 
 ted States and the Union of the States thereunder, and that I will in like 
 manner abide by and faithfully support all acts of Congcess passed during the 
 existing rebellion with reference to slaves, so long and so far as not repealed, modi - 
 lied, or held void by Congress or by decision of the Supreme Court, and that 
 I will, in like manner, abide and faithfully support**!! proclamations of the 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 15* 
 
 ble emancipation of the slaves ; the perpetuity of confiscations ; 
 pardon on condition of an oath of allegiance to the government, 
 to the Union, and to the Abolition parti/ of the North ; the ex- 
 ception from this pardon of all important ranks in the army and' 
 conditions in political life ; and Anally the n»onstrous "republi- 
 can anomaly that one-tenth of the voters in any of the Confed- 
 erate States, declaring for these terms, " should be recognized 
 as the true government of the State." ! In proposing these ut- 
 terly infamous terms, this Yankee* monster of inhumanity and 
 falsehood, had the audacity to declare that in some of the Con- 
 federate States the elements for reconstruction were ready for 
 action ; that those who controlled them differed however as to. 
 
 • lent made during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves, so 
 far as'not modified or* declared void by decision of the Supreme Court. So 
 heJp me God.'" # 
 
 The persons excepted from the benefits of the foregoing provisions are all 
 who lire or shall have been civil or diplomatic officers or agents of the so- 
 Mii.cd Confederate Government; all who have left judicial stations under the 
 r .''.uted Slates to aid in the rebellion ? all who are or shall have been military 
 *»c naval officers of said so called Confederate Government above the rank of 
 nel in the army, of Lieutenant in the navy ; all who left seats in the Uni- 
 Mates Congress .to aid the rebellion. 
 Ail who resigned commissions in the army or nary of the United State?, 
 and afterwards aided tjic rebellion, ari* all who have engaged in any way in 
 ting colored persons or white persons in charge of suchfctherwise than 
 lawfully as prisoners of war, who have been found in the United States ser- 
 vice as soldiers, seamen *r in any other capacity. 
 
 And I do funhec proclaim, declare and make known? ftiat whenever, in any 
 pf the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Ala- 
 bama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina, a number of per- 
 sons, not less than one-tenth in number of the votes cast in such States, at the 
 Presidential election of the year of our Lord, 1860, eaoh having taken the 
 oath aforesaid, and not having. since violated it, and being a qualified voter 
 >y the election law of the State existing immediately before the so-called act of 
 ■i?o^ssion, and excluding all omers, shall re-establish a State Government, 
 which shall be republican, and in ho wise contravening said oath, such sha'l 
 be recognized as the true Government of the State, and the State shall receive 
 thereunder the benefit of the Constitutional prolusion which declares that 
 . '-The United States shall guarantee to every «State in the Union a Republi 
 can form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, on 
 implication of the Legislature or of. the Executive, when the Legislature can- 
 not be convened, against domestic violence." 
 
•16 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 the plan of action ; and that, " by the proclamation a plan is 
 presented which may be accepted by them as a rallying point, 
 and which they are assured in advance will not.be rejected here." 
 This insulting and brutal proposition of the Yankee Govern- 
 ment was the apt »esponse to tfrose few cowardly factions which 
 in North Carolina, and in some parts of Georgia and Alabama, 
 hinted at "reconstruction." It was as tne sound of a trumpet 
 to every brave man in the South to*meet and to contest a ques- 
 tion of life and death. Appeals had formerly been made in the 
 Confederacy against "reconstruction" on such arguments as" 
 the conduct of the enemy in the war ; his.political. prostitution ; his 
 vandalism ; and sentimental motives of vengeance. There were 
 truth and eloquence in those appeals. But now there was ano- 
 ther added to them which addressed us not only in our passions 
 but in every fibre of our selfishness, and in every ramification X)f 
 our interests. It was uxe authoritative exposition to the South 
 of the consequences of its submission. These oould no longer 
 be misconstrued: they were gibbets, proscription, universal pov- 
 erty, the subversion of our social system, a feudal allegiance to 
 the Abolitionists and the depths of dishonour. 
 
 The proclamation of President Lincoln was made under cer- 
 tain affectations of benevolent zeal for the negro. He declared 
 that his former h emancipation" proclamation had " much im- 
 proved the tone of public sentiment in foreign countries,'' and 
 he insisted that to abandon it would be to the negro " a cruel 
 and astounding breach of faith." 
 
 In view of these pretensions, it is not out of place here to 
 make a brief summary of the true questions of the war, and its 
 real relations to* negro slavery in the South. 
 
 A French pamphlet on the American War, published at Paris, 
 holds the following language : . 
 
 " The pride of' the Ntrth will never stoop to admit the supe- 
 riority of Southern men; and yet it is from these that the 
 "Union drew its best statesmen and a majority of its presidents. 
 "The pride of the Nx>rth will bend only to necessity, because it 
 
THE BIVAfi ADMINISTRATIONS. 17 
 
 " has not kept pace with the progress of the age. To-day the 
 "Americans of the North are as completely foreign to the fa- 
 "mily of nations as they were twenty years ago. They under- 
 " stand nothing but the narrowest and most mechanical mercan- 
 tilism, the art of purchase and sale ; and they long, to annihi- 
 " late the Confederate States in order that the South, by its intelli- 
 " gence, its enterprise, and the talent of its statesmen, may not 
 " throw down the rampart it has built up against Europeanism, 
 
 * * * " The federals are so well aware of this that the war 
 u which they are waging is really and mainly a war of interest. 
 " The producing, agricultural South was the commercial vassal 
 " of the North, which insists upon keeping its best customer : 
 "emancipation is merely a skillful device" for entrapping the 
 " sympathies of European liberalism. * * * * * * The 
 " Northern idea of the abolition of slavery by making the negro 
 " food for powder or by exiling him from his home to die of hun- 
 " ger is now thoroughly understood in Europe. Our notions of 
 " philanthropy and our moral sense alike revolt from these fe- 
 " rocious exaggerations of the love of liberty." 
 
 The above is an admirable summary of the questions of the 
 war — especially of the " slavery question." . There is no doubt 
 that the Anti-Slavery party in the North had, through the vio- 
 lence of its measures, and the exposure of its hollow pretensions 
 for the negro, lost much of that sympathy in Europe which it 
 had formerly obtained ; while the war had also given occasion 
 to intelligent persons in all parts of the world for a more tho- 
 rough, a more interested and a more practical study of slavery 
 in the* South. The old stories which the newspapers of the 
 enemy revived of fiendish masters in the South and pandemo- 
 niums on the cotton plantations, had now come to be objects of 
 skepticism or derision in Europe ; especially when these cheap 
 and frightful romances were seen to be simply stories concocted 
 between fugitive .negroes and credulous Tools who listened to 
 them, and embellished them for "sensations" in Yankee prints.* 
 
 * The following was published in the summer of 1863, in Harper's Journal 
 of Civilization. It'^s an excellent- specimen of the u raw-head-and-bloody- 
 boneslof Yankee literature on the subject of the negro. Itf purported to be 
 2 
 
18 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 In connection with the subjecf of the relations of slavery to 
 the w,ar, it becomes interesting to inquire what real benefits to 
 the negro were accomplished by the political measures of the 
 Lincoln government. The famous "emancipation" proclama- 
 tion extended " freedom " to the negro, merely to subject him 
 to a worse fate, and to transfer him from the peaceful service of 
 the plantation to that of the military camp. It was followed • 
 by various acts of Congress to enlist the- negro in the military 
 service. It was stated by Mr. SeWard, in a diplomatic circular 
 dated the 12th of August, 1863, that nearly seventy thousand 
 negroes were at that time employed in the, Yankee armies, of 
 whom twenty-two thousand were actually bearing arms in the 
 
 the statement of fugitive slaves from an estate in Mississippi, "by way of il- 
 lustrating the degree of brutality which slavery has developed in the South." 
 " The tratment of the slaves, they say, has been growing worse and worse 
 for the last six or seven years. 
 
 " Flogging with a leather strap on the naked body is common ; also, pad- 
 dling the body with a hand-saw until the skin is a mass of blisters, and then 
 breaking the blisters with the teeth of the sajv. They have "very often" seen 
 slaves stretched out upon the ground with hands and feet held down by fel- 
 low slaves, or lashed to stakes driven into the ground for "burning." Hand- 
 fuls of dry corn husks are then lighted, and the burning embers are whipped 
 off with a stick so as to fall in showers of live sparks upon the naked back. 
 This is continued until the victim is covered with blisters. If, in his writh- 
 ings of torture the slave gets his hands free to brush off the fire, the burning 
 brand is* applied to them. 
 
 " Another method of punishment, which is inflicted for the higher order of 
 crimes such as running away, or other refractory conduct, is to dig a hole in 
 the ground large enough for the slave to squat or lie down in. The victim is 
 then stripped naked and placed in the hole, and a covering or grating of green 
 sticks is laid over the opening. Upon this a quick fire is built, and the live 
 embers sifted through upon the naked flesh of the slave, until his body is 
 blistered and swollen almost to bursting. With just enough of life to enable 
 him to crawl, the slave is then allowed to recover from his wounds if he can, 
 or to end his sufferings by death. 
 
 " ' Charley Sloo' and ' Overton,' two hands, were both murdered by these 
 cruel tortures. ' Slco' was whipped to death, dying under the infliction r 
 or soon after punishment. ' Overton' was laid naked upon his face and 
 burned as above described, so that the chords of his legs and the musoles of 
 the back refused longer to perform their office. He was, neverthelfess, forced 
 into the field to labor, but being crippled was unable tt«nove quick enough 
 to suit 'Jeems ;' so one day, in a fit of passion, he struck him on fye head 
 with a heavy stick and kitted him. 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 19 
 
 field ; and at a later date (that of the meeting of the Yankee 
 Congress in December), the whole number of these, African al- 
 lies of the North was said to exceed one hundred thousand. 
 The employment, as soldiers, against the . Confederacy, of this 
 immense number of blacks, was a brutality and crime in sight 
 of the world ;*it was the ignoring of civilization in warfare ; it 
 was a savage atrocity inflicted on the South ; — but it, certainiy, 
 was no benefit to the negro. 14 could be no benefit to him that 
 he should be exposed to the fury of the war, and translated 
 from a peaceful and domestic # sphere of labour to the hardships 
 of the camp and the mortal perils of the battle-field. 
 
 The scheme of the colonization of the negro in the invaded 
 
 "Tom' had the consumption, but was forced to work in the cotton field. 
 One night he was missing from his cabin. Two days afterward his body was 
 found in the field, where he had fallen and died on his way home. 
 
 'The poor old slave had gone to rest.' 
 
 % 
 
 .** 'Edmond,* belonging o^n the widow G.'s plantation, has been a witness of ' 
 or knowing to several cases of ptmishment by the burning process. Two of 
 these were of girls belonging to the widow G., in New Orleans, and the others 
 occurring on her 'island plantation,' before referred to. America, wife of 
 Essex, one of the women in the party, related the particulars, of one ca? 
 follows: There was a middle-aged womad in the family, named Margaret - 
 who haU a nursing child. Mrs.G. ordered Margaret to wean the child. The babe 
 was weakly, and Margaret did not wish to do so. Mrs.'G. told her that she would 
 examine her bretist thfe next Monday, and, if she found any milk in it. she 
 would punish her severely. Moriday came round, and on that day Marga- 
 ret's stent was to spin eighteen "broaches"— spools — but she did not finish it 
 At night the promised examination topk place, and the breast of Margaret 
 gave but too convincing proof that, in obedience to the yearnings of a mo- 
 ther's heart, she had spurned the threat of the inhuman mistress. Mrs G 
 then ordered the handsaw, the leather strap, and a wash bowl of water. The 
 woman was laid upon her face, her clothes stripped up to around her neck 
 and 'Becky' and 'Jane' were called to hold her hands and feet. Mrs. G. 
 then paddled her with the hand-saw, sitting composedly in a chair over her 
 victim. After striking some one hundred blows, she changed to the use of 
 the leather strap, which she would dip into the wash bowl in order to give it 
 greater power of torture. Under this infliction, the screams of the woman 
 died'^way t© a faint moan, but the 'sound of the whip' continued until nearly 
 11 o'clock. 'Jane' was then ordered to bring the hot tongs, the woman was 
 turned over upon her back, audMrs. G. attempted to grasp the woman's nip- 
 ples with the heated implement. The writhings of the mother foiled her 
 purpose; but between the breasts the skin and flesh were horribly burned." 
 
20 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 districts of the South, was alike destitute of "benefit to him, 
 and destructive of # the white "civilization " under whose aus- 
 pices it was conducted.' "Wherever this new system of labour 
 was introduced, the negro suffered, the. plantation relapsed into 
 W^eds, the garden disappeared, and desolation and ruin took up 
 their abodes. It had converted- the rice coasts 6*f South Caro- 
 lina into barrens. It had been instituted on a grand scale in 
 Louisiana. The result was, to* use the language of a Yankee 
 writer, this beautiful State was fast becoming " an alligator 
 pleasure-ground." Where formerly had nourished rich and 
 teeming plantations, were to be seen here and there some show 
 of cultivation, some acres of corn and cane; but these were 
 "government" plantations; the able-bodied negroes had been 
 forced into the Yankee military service, and a few aged and 
 shiftless negroes, who poked lazily through the weed-growth, 
 were the only signs of labour in the vast districts occupied by 
 the enemy. In Louisiana, where the Yankees had indulged such 
 hopes of "infusing new life" by free labour and the scientific 
 farming of Massachusetts, the development of the country, its 
 return in crops, in wealth amounted to little more than nothing. 
 The negro had merely exchanged his Southern master for a 
 Massachusetts shoe-maker, who was anxious to become a Louis- 
 iana sugar-maker. His condition was not improved ; his com- 
 forts were decreased-; and the country itself, redeemed by the 
 most tedious labours from the waters of the Mississippi, and 
 brought to a point of fertility unexampled in American soils, 
 was fast reverting to the original swamp. Louisiana had taken 
 more than fifty years to raise the banks of trie Mississippi, to 
 drain and redeem the swamp lands, and to make herself a great 
 producing State. But, said the N«w York World, "it has re- 
 " quired only a few months for the Administration at Washing- 
 ton to prepare the State for its return to its original worth- 
 " lessness ; to ' restore ' it to barbarism ; to re-people it, in spots, 
 "with half-bred bastards; to drive out every vestige of civili- 
 " zation, and to make the paradise of the South a rank, rotten, 
 "miasmatic, alligator and moccasin swamp-ground again." 
 
 The fact is indisputable, that in all the localities of the Con-- 
 > ederacy where the enemy had, obtained a foothold, the negroes 
 
TEE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. '21 
 
 had been reduced by mortality during the war to not more than 
 one-half their previous number. 
 
 ' ,The affectation of the Yankee Jor the good of the negro was 
 intended (however ineffectually), to solicit the sympathies of 
 Europe in the war. It could no longer hope to impose upon the 
 South, and it did not hesitate to unmask to it its brutal and fe- 
 rocious insincerity. In the meantime, the " war-to-the-knife " 
 party in the North, with theiarge accession of so many blacks 
 to its armies, and a recent confirmation at the polls of its partj- 
 strength, was preparing for new careers of atrocity and crime. 
 
 VII. 
 
 While thus the war waxed in the hands of the North, the 
 Administration at Richmond had nothing to respond to its fero- 
 city but a feeble sentimentalism and a weak protest for the 
 -rights of humanity, which amused the enemy, and disgusted the 
 stern spirit of a people fighting for their liberties. 4C Retalia- 
 tion " had by this time become a lost word in our vocabulary. 
 In the year now well nigh past, the Yankees had enacted bar- 
 barities greater than those of former years, in proportion as they 
 were encouraged by impunity. They had burned the town of 
 Darien, and this, one of the oldest towns in Georgia, the New 
 Inverness of Oglethorpe's time, was now a plain of ashes and 
 blackened chimneys. They had, in a raid on the Combahee, 
 committ^* to the flames the beautiful town of Bluffton. They 
 had attempted to destroy Charleston by an incendiary composi- 
 ■tion. They had made a desert of the whole country between 
 the Big Black and the Mississippi, and in every district of the 
 South which they had penetrated, houses had been either pil- 
 laged or burnt, crops laid waste, and enormities committed which 
 exhausted the calendar of crimes. 
 
 Yet we have seen that when General Lee invaded the terri- 
 tory of the North he had omitted even the devastation of Ae 
 enemy's country, had paid the Yankees' own prices for their sup- 
 plies, and had, in fact, given a protection to- their property 
 which had never been afforded that of our own citizens, either 
 
...... 
 
 22 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 from the rapacity of the soldier or that of the impressment agent. 
 
 It is true that of this singular behaviour President Davis said 
 in his message to Congress* "Though the forbearance - may 
 " have been unmerited and unappreciated -by the enemy, it was 
 " imposed by their " [our soldiers] '" own self-respect, which for- 
 " bade their degenerating from Christian warriors into plunder- 
 ing ruffians." But herein the President sought to impose 
 upon the public mind not only a wretched piece of sentimental- 
 ism, but a glaring fallacy ^ alike unworthy of his intellect. The 
 punishment of the Yankees for what they had done in the 
 South certainly did not mean an imitation of the wrong — & re- 
 taliation in hind. The Southern people had almost unanimously 
 applauded General Lee's orders in Pennsylvania restraining pil- 
 lage and private outrage. But there were penalties other than 
 those of marauding which might have been measured out to the 
 enemy, and have inflicted upon him some injury commensurate 
 with what we had suffered at his hands. It would not have been 
 unjust, it would not have been immoral, it would not have de- 
 tracted from our "self-respect," it would not have endangered 
 the discipline of our troops, it would not have been an act un- 
 becoming " Christian warriors," to have laid waste the enemy's 
 country, if done under the justification of retaliation, with the 
 deliberation of official orders, and by the army acting in line of 
 battle. But no such orders were given; no such lines of battle 
 carried with it the chastisements of real, war ; and the fertile 
 acres of the Pennsylvania Valley were untouched by the hands 
 of the "Christian warriors." ■ # # 
 
 The subject of " retaliation " brings to the mind a number of 
 specific acts in which the Confederate government had failed, 
 alike, in the execution of justice and in the protection of its own 
 people. *-The record of these affords an exhibition of weakness 
 that is, positively, without parallel- in the history of govern- 
 ments. .In contrasting the rival administrations of the North 
 and South, it is indispensable here to make a brief review of 
 the incidents to which we have referred in the history of the 
 "retaliation " policy. They are rapidly grouped in the sum- 
 mary which follows : 
 
 1. Shortly after the capture of New Orleans, General Butler 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 23 
 
 executed a citizen of the Confederacy, William B. Munford, for 
 the extraordinary crime of " disrespect " to the Yankee flag. 
 
 Instead of making prompt retaliation, the Confederate gov- 
 ernment found a conveniently circuitous course in addressing, 
 Several months after the event, the singularly gratuitous inquiry 
 to the Lincoln government, whether the act of Butler was " ap- 
 proved "by it. 
 . The authorities at Washington returned this answer: 
 
 Headquarters of the Army, \ 
 
 Washington, Aug. 9, 1862. / 
 
 Gen'l R. E. Lee, Comd'g, &c. : 
 
 General — 'Your two communications of the 2nd inst., with 
 enclosures, are received. As these papers are couched in lan- 
 guage exceedingly insulting to the. government of the United 
 States, I must respectfully decline to receive them. They are 
 returned herewith. 
 
 Very respectfully, * » 
 
 Your ob't' serv't, 
 
 H. W. Halleck, 
 Gen'1-in-Chief U. S. Army. 
 
 And here ended the "whole matter. . k 
 
 2. At Palmyra, in Missouri, General McNeil murdered in 
 cold blood ten soldiers of the Confederacy. 
 
 Although the Confederate government must have had prompt 
 official intelligence of this outrage, it was only several months 
 thereafter, when "the Palmyra massacre " had been inconve- 
 niently noised in'the newspapers, that President Davis ordered 
 by telegraph the execution, in retaliation, of ten Yankee prison- 
 ers, in the department of the Trans-Mississippi. 
 
 The bloody telegram, communicated by the Richmond au- 
 thorities to the press- with peculiar liberality of information, 
 quieted it and consoled the public. But thajj was all ; the tele- 
 graphic order was never executed ; it was a dead letter, that 
 died in the public mind; and the Palmyra massacre, was not 
 only unavenged, but justice itself was cheated by a false and 
 most unworthy shoiv of compliance w;th its demands. 
 
 3. Under the "Death Order" of Burnside, two Confederate 
 officers, Captains Corbin and McGraw, had been executed for 
 recruiting white soldiers in Kentucky, a part of our own terri- 
 
24 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 tory, embraced in our political system and represented in our 
 Congress ; at a time when the Yankees were recruiting negro 
 soldiers in our political jurisdiction, and in the circle of our 
 homes. 
 
 By the order of the Confederate government, two Yankee 
 prisoners were selected by a formal • lot * at "Richmond, upon 
 whom retaliation was to be visited. The day of their execution 
 was fixed. But instead of hanging them, President Davis ar- 
 ranged a back-door of mercy by commissioning a personage no 
 less considerable than Mr. Stephens, Vice-President of the Re- 
 public, to make arrangements in Washington " to temper the 
 present • cruel character of the contest." The " back-door of 
 mercy " was closed in his face. Mr. Stephens went as far as 
 Hampton Roads, where he was stopped by the enenTy's Admi- 
 ral, with' the curt information from Washington, that the enemy 
 wished no further communication with the Confederacy than it 
 already had through the ordinary military channels. , 
 
 In the meantime, the Yankee government, without troubling 
 itself with a selection by lot, had summarily designated two of 
 tlie most important prisoners in its hands as victims to repay 
 with their lives the tragedy that had been appointed at Rich- 
 mond. The consequences were, that the tragedy did not come 
 on°, but the Confederate government replied with some brave 
 words, that it was not dismayed by the threat, but would, at its 
 convenience, execute the penalties it had pronounced. The day 
 of execution passed ; there was no public notice of respite of 
 pardon; there was no other day of execution appointed; and 
 the convenient silence .of the authorities was evidence enough 
 that the matter Was dropped, and. that they desired it to pass 
 out of the public mind* Thus terminated this issue of " re- 
 taliation." 
 
 4. A notorious renegrade, Rucker,- was taken in the ranks of 
 the enemy in Western Virginia, and committed as a spy and 
 murderer. The Yankees threatened the life of one of our 
 prisoners of war, if he should be executed. 
 
 The criminal was kept fifteen months without a trial, and at 
 last conveniently escaped. There was no possible occasion for 
 the extraordinary delay of a trial, unless *that the Confederate 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 25 
 
 authorities feared to risk its conclusion, for the evidence was 
 ready, abundant, and immediately at hand to convict Kim. 
 
 5. The Yankees imprisoned women for waving handkerchiefs 
 at our prisoners. For offences not 'much more considerable, 
 they put them in political jails, and subjected them to the vilest 
 indignities, and to penalties whicl^ made no distinction of sex. 
 
 In the summer of 1863, a Mrs. Patterson Allen, & Yankee 
 woman, was detected in IJichmond holding the most brutal and 
 treasonable communication with the enemy; pointing out to him 
 objects for his resentment ; and proposing to betray into his 
 hands as prisoner administer of Christ, under whose roof, at the 
 time the letter was written, the Yankee spy and traitress was 
 herself »a guest, and a sick child of the minister was dying in 
 the absence of its father. 
 
 By special direction of. the Confederate Secretary of "War, 
 Mr. Seddon, Mrs. Patterson Allen, a fashionable woman, was 
 sent, not to prison, but to the Asylum, Frances de Sales, in 
 Richmond. Her trial had not yet taken place ; and for nearly 
 six months the vulgarity of n- legal prison w.as spared her, and 
 a romantic confinement in a charitable institution was the chi- 
 valric invention of the Confederacy for the crime of treason ! 
 
 6. It had been estimated by the Confederate Commissioner 
 of Exchange, in the fall of 1863, that the enemy heM in im~ 
 prisonment not less than one thousand citizens of the Confede- 
 racy, who had been captured in peaceful employments, and were 
 in no way amenable as combatants in the war. • 
 
 In a correspondence on the subject of exchange* of prisoners, 
 the Confederate government protested against the outrageous 
 practice of the enemy in arresting non-combatants and kidnap- 
 ping private citizens within his military lines or elsewhere with- 
 in his reach. But the enemy continued these arrests, ajid no 
 retaliation was ever attempted. At the time unarmed citizens of 
 the Confederacy were torn from their homes in Mississippi and 
 sent to the jails of Memphis, General Lee protected the citizens 
 of Pennsylvania, and allowed them even to avow their political 
 animosity in his camps. ' * 
 
 7. When General Morgan was captured by the enemy, he 
 was carried to Cincinnati, and thence he and twenty-eight t>f 
 
26 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 his officers were taken to Columbus, Ohio, where they were 
 shaved, their hair cut close by a negro convict, and then locked 
 up in cells. Seven days afterwards, forty-two more of (xeneral 
 Morgan's officers were conveyed from Johnston's Island to the 
 penitentiary, r and subjected to the same indignities. 
 
 A correspondence ensued between the Commissioners Of Ex- 
 change on the subject of these cruelties and indignities, in which 
 the excuse was made by the enemy that the Federal authority 
 was not responsible for them, implying that the State of Ohio ' 
 having these captives in her custody, had chosen to associate 
 them with convicts. 
 
 Yet, at this time, our government was, in deference to " gen- 
 eral orders " at Washington, treating as prisoners of war ne- 
 groes captured in arms, who were clearly responsible to the au- 
 thority of the States, under State laws, as criminals. Ko 
 surrender of these criminals was made to any of the States of • 
 the^, Confederacy, and when South Carolina made. some motion 
 in the matter, it was strangely hushed up, and the negro mal- 
 factors retained to this day by the Confederate authority in full 
 enjoyment of the privileges accorded them by Yankee edict, as 
 "'prisoners of war." 
 
 8. The enemy had violated the cartel. Under this cartel, for 
 many months, we had restored to the enemy .many thousands of 
 prisoners in excess of those whom he held for exchange. But 
 in July, when the fortune of war favoured the Yankees, and 
 theyfheld the excess of prisoners, they had broken the cartel; 
 they had refused to return to our lines the prisoners taken at 
 Gettysburg ; and they had gone further even than this treach- 
 ery, for they had not only. retained the prisoners captured by 
 them, but they had declared null the paroles given by the pris- 
 oners captured by us in the same series of engagements. 
 
 What were the returns of the Confederate government for 
 this* outrage ? It allowed the prisoners in our hands comforts 
 not enjoyed by the men who captured them in battle. It per- 
 mitted the Yankee captives in Richmond to receive stores from 
 !he North to the amount of half 'a million of dollars. It in* 
 dulged them in a festival ; and while our prisoners were sighing 
 in lhe dungeons and penitentiaries of the North, or at John- 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 27 
 
 ston's Island, were (to use President Davis' own statement), dy- 
 ing from the slow tortures of cold, " exposed to the piercing 
 cold of the Northern lakes, by men who cannot be ignorant oft 
 even if they do not design, the provable result," a table d'hote 
 was spread in the Libby Prison at Richmond, with all the luxu- 
 ries that the teeming markets of the Northern cities could af- 
 ford. And this licentiousness^ with its awful and terrible con- 
 trast to our own 'people, went by the name of Christian charity 
 in Richmond, and was a pleasant humanity to be told to 
 Europe ! • 
 
 * * * * * In his message to Congress, President Da- 
 vis eloquently adverted to the savage ferocity of the enemy and 
 his crimes. But he had not a word to say of what lmd become 
 of all his proclamations, pronunciamentoes, gloomy appeals and 
 terrible threatenings with respect to retaliation. The truth was 
 they had never resulted in one solitary performance ; they were 
 a record of bluster and an exhibition of weakness and shame 
 upon which the President might well turn his back. It is re- 
 markable that Mr. Davis in all these proceedings touching ques- 
 tions of retaliation should have shown a character so different 
 from that which he- exhibited in the domestic controversies and 
 intrigues of his administration. In his controversies with his 
 military officers he was very obstinate, very bitter ; in his at- 
 tachment to certain favourites and to certain measures of do- 
 mestic policy he*was immoveable and defiant. It was only when 
 his duty brought him in contact with the enemy that these im- 
 perious traits of character disappeared, and were replaced by 
 halting timidity and weak hesitation. 
 
 It was unfortunate that the Confederate President ever made 
 any threats of retaliation, since he had not the resolution to 
 per* form them. They had 'been ineffectually repeated until they 
 had become the sneer of .the enemy. But the most unfortunate 
 consequence of the want of a proper response to the cruel assump- 
 tions of power by the North was. the moral effect it had upon our 
 own people ; for it implied a certain guilt, a certain moral infe- 
 riority in the South of which the enemy had the right to take 
 advantage. It converted the relations between us and our foes 
 to those of the malfactor and the constable ; it depressed our 
 
28 THE HIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. - • 
 
 sense of right ; and it gave to the soldier the bitter reflection 
 that his government cared but little for him in that martyrdom 
 on the gallows or captivity in dungeons with the terrours of 
 which the enemy assailed him. 
 
 % VIII. 
 
 Finally, there is this to be said of the rival administrations of 
 Richmond and Washington: tfiat if in the former there were to 
 be found many evidences of weakness, these, at least, were not 
 crimes, while if in the latter there were to be seen vigour and 
 decision, tfhey were associated with the insolence of the repro- 
 bate and the inhumanity of the savage. If the history of the 
 retaliation policy and other questions which we have traced, ex- 
 hibits imbecility on the part of the Confederate authorities, it 
 has this compensation: that it has inseparably connected with it 
 a fearful record of the inhumanity and crime of the enemy. 
 
 In this conflict, which as to governments was that between the 
 weakly good and the resolutely evil, the people of the Confede- 
 racy had but little to expect from their pblitical authorities ; 
 but it was precisely the condition in which they had much to 
 expect from the resources of their own righteous and aroused 
 passions. . , 
 
 In connection with his "p^eace" proclamation, the Yankee 
 President pointed with an air of triumph to the great resources 
 of the North for the prosecution of the war. There was an ac- 
 tual surplus in its treasury. While the Confederacy had collected 
 only one hundred millions from its tax and revenue system, the 
 receipts of the Yankee treasury were nine hundred millions. 
 The Yankee army was increased. The Yankee navy now num- 
 bered nearly six hundred vessels, and seventy-five of them were 
 iroji-clads or armoured steamers. The Yankee political parties 
 had accommodated their differences and no longer embarrassed 
 the authorities at Washington. "The crisis which threatened 
 to divide the friends of the Union is past," said Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 The 'long continued delusion, indulged by Southern men, of 
 "a peace party" in the North, which would eventually compel 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 29 
 
 peace on the terms of the Confederacy, is to be compared to 
 'that similar delusion of Northern politicians, which insistedthat 
 " 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 agreea- 
 ble confidence of the South in its supposed friends in the North, 
 had been rudely dispelled by events that admitted of but one 
 construction. The South had mistaken for substantial tokens of 
 public sentiment the clamours and exaggerations of party elec- 
 tions.- 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 allu- 
 sions to a» impossible peace and platitudes of fraternal senti- 
 ment were merely intended to catch favour in the South,' and 
 realty meant nothing. Even Mr. Seymour, of New York, 
 managed, white cozening the South, -to maintain, on the other 
 hand, a cordial understanding with the authorities at Washing- 
 ton ; and he found it necessary to. conclude one of his finest 
 speeches, by saying, " never have I embarrassed' the Adminis- 
 tration, and I nepr 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, had been badly 
 beat in the fall elections. From Minnesota to Maine, the Dem- 
 ocrats were defeated. In the latter which was supposed to be 
 the least fanatical of t]ie New England States, the Republicans 
 had carried the election by an overwhelming majority. In Ohio, 
 Vallandigham had been defeated. 'He was still in exile. Voor- 
 hies, who had proclaimed doctrines somewhat similar to his, in 
 a neighbouring State, narrowly escaped being lynched by the 
 soldiers.' The elections were followed hy a remarkable period 
 of political quiet in the^North. Those who had the courage to 
 confront the administration of Lincoln, had either been sup- 
 pressed by the # strong hand of law Jess power, or had supinely 
 sought safety in silence. The overthrow of free government in 
 the North was complete, and now in the winter of 1863, the 
 usurpation at Washington stood unchallenged and unrebuked. 
 
30 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 
 
 It had now a united people, and unexhausted treasury, enlarged 
 military resources and a confidence more insolent than ever. 
 
 Richmond, in December 1863, was a sombre city. An air 
 of gloom pervaded the public offices. In Congress, Mr. Foote 
 told his endless story of official corruption and imbecility, and 
 had his savage jokes on " the pepper doctor from North Caro*- 
 Una," who governed the commissariat of the Confederacy. There 
 were no social gaieties, although disreputable balls and gambling 
 "hells" still amused those immoral mobs, at all times inseparable 
 from a metropolis. In the streets there was the perpetual jug- 
 gle ,of bargain and sale, apparently unconscious of the war, 
 simply because engrossed in individual avarice ; the clatter of 
 the auction sales ; the levity of the thoroughfare. But there 
 was the seriousness of anxiety, if not the gloom of despair, in 
 the home, in the private sanctuary,' in the public office — in every 
 place where thoughtful minds contemplated the future, and 
 looked beyond the circle of the twenty-four hours. 
 
 , Washington was gay, in the meantime, not with thoughtless- 
 ness, but with exultations over the prospects of the war, and 
 the promises of its government. Balls, "diamond"' weddings, 
 Presidential levees* social parties, with splendid arrays of silks 
 and jewels, with all the phantasy of wealth, the insolence of 
 licentiousness, and the fashionable commerce of lust, amused the 
 hours. Mr. Lincoln was jocose again. He snapped his fingers 
 at "the rebellion." He attended the theatre nightly. This 
 piece of. human jacquerie chattered incessantly over the suc- 
 cess of his schemes. The Northern newspapers indulged the 
 almost immediate prospect of a peace, which was to irradiate 
 the Yankee arms, humiliate the South, and open the door to the 
 prosperity of the conquerors in an indiscriminate plunder, and 
 the lasting vassalage of the vanquished. The New York Her- 
 ald declared, that even if this event did. not happen in the fes- 
 tivities of the Christmas season of r 63, it would certainly be 
 celebrated in the early part of the ensuing year. 
 
 * * * * * * Intelligent men of the South, under- 
 stood the approaching issues. The war was to oe prosecuted by 
 the North with certain important accessions to its former advan- 
 tages ; and, on the side of the South, there was a demand for a 
 
THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 31 
 
 new measure of that devotion in the minds of the people, which 
 wins success on unequal .terms— and without which all expe- 
 dients of State, airviolence of legislation, and all commands 
 of authority are utterly in vain. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 There is a little piece of official history whicn may be properly given here, 
 in connection with certain questions pending in the Confederate Congress 
 while the foregoing pages have been passing through the press. 
 
 On the 8th of January, '64, Mr. Dargan, of Alabama, referred in the Rouse 
 of Representatives to u acts of merciless auelty " on the part of the authorities, 
 with reference to exemptions, which it was then proposed, by a certain dema- 
 gogical bill in the House, to ehtrust exclusively and omnipotently to the 
 Executive. He illustrated the epithets applied by an instance where a rnaa 
 had been mercilessly put in the military service who had never walked and 
 never been able to walk a quarter of a mile in any one day"in his life, and 
 all the efforts made by Mr. Dargan with the Secretary of War to procure his 
 release had so far been unavailing. 
 
 Yet it appears, from a certain record, that the same official >vho had been 
 so exacting to the 'cripple, and who solicited from Congress plenary powers 
 on the subject of exemptions, had given, over his own name, a special, secret 
 exemption, to a man who professed to him that he was writing a history of 
 the war; in which it was, of course, expected that Mr. James Seddon wota4d - 
 be one of the figure-heads in the gallery of celebrities. 
 
 This little piece of nefarious traffic in an official's vanity is of record: eke 
 it might be doubted whether, even in our Democratic system, a man occupy- 
 ing Mr. Seddon's position could be so easily and shamefully used. 
 
 We copy the extraordinary paper below; omitting the name of its benefi- 
 ciary, because it is not necessary to history, and because we are anxious to 
 spare all private feelings which are not materially involved in. a public issive : 
 
 Confederate States of America, } 
 War Department, 
 Richmond, October 20, 1863;' ) 
 
 Mr. not being a native or naturalized citizen of the Confederacy, 
 
 and moreover, being engaged in compiling a work of interest to our people, and 
 advantageous to our cause, is exempt until further orders from conscription. 
 
 James A. Seddon, 
 
 Secretary of War. 
 
 Of^this envious paper two remarks are to be made: 
 
 * 1. If Mr. had relied for exemption upon his alienage, (a plea we 
 
 must suppose him unwilling to admit, 'after his literary exploits for the Confed- 
 eracy,) then it was quite unnecessary for the Secretary to assign " moreover ". 
 his literary adventure as a cause of exemption. 
 
 2. If Mr. had relied for exemption upon his alienage, it wa3 not for 
 
 the Secretary of W*ar, but for the consular authority or the courts to give him 
 the "benefit of tnat plea. 
 
 This record may appear -to Jae # a small matter for history. It is not: it ifc 
 one evidence, selected because it is indisputable, of the spirit that is fast re- 
 ducing the administration of the Confederate affairs to schools of demagogue- 
 is in and paltry inventions of personal vanity. + 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR, 
 
 By E. A. POLLARD, 
 
 Author of u Black Diamonds" &c. 
 The Church and State Rrview of London says of the English reprint: 
 " Mr. Pollard has certainly given us one of the best works that has yet ap- 
 peared upon that universally interesting topic, the American war. We must 
 be content merely to recommend the book to the attention of the student, and 
 to proceed to point out, as briefly as possible, some 01 the peculiarities which 
 render this work so especially valuable to all who desire to reach the real 
 facts of the case. The neenracy of the narrative has been already noticed. 
 We have now to pay our tribute to a far more unusual, and at least equally 
 important characteristic, its singularly dispassionate impartiality. It is a 
 quality rare indeed, even in history written long after all personal feeling has 
 died away; in the story of a conflict actually raging, and that with extreme 
 ferocity, it is, we may venture to say, almost unprecedented. Throughout the 
 entire struggle, indeed, nothing has more raised the Confederate cause in Eu- 
 ropean eyes than the contrast afforded by Southern reticence and selfrespect 
 to ttie empty and vaporing and reckless misrepresentation of the North. By 
 its bearing, no less than by its valor, the new Republic has fair'y wrung from 
 us a reluctant sympathy; and to this sympathy, now so universally felt, Mr. 
 Pollard's volume will powerfully contribute." 
 
 The above work is for sale by all Booksellers in the Confederate States, and 
 by the Publishers, WEST & JOHNSTON, Richmond, Va. 
 
 | THE SECOND YEAR OF THE WAR. 
 
 By E. A. POLLARD, 
 
 Author of " The Fisst Year/' &c. 
 
 The publishers are able to gratify the anxious expectations of the public 
 with the stcund volume of a work which has already attained in Europe and 
 elsewhere the reputation of the history of the war, which has 1 obtained a com- 
 pliment rarely given wtiters of the South, having been republished in the 
 United States at New York, and in England at London, and which, besides 
 these indications of solid merit, has won surpassing favor in the South, to 
 judge from the -fact that twenty editions of the iirst vol unit* have already been 
 Bold in the Confederacy. • 
 
 NOTICES. 
 
 "This, the second volume of Mr. Pollar4'< History of the War, Will meet 
 with even u wider circulation than the litnt. It contains remarkably well 
 written accounts of the great battle* which have, taken place in the second 
 year of this struggle — accounts which have the merit of being compiled from 
 reliable t-ourees, and the beauty of a strong and dashing 6tyle in the writer.'' 
 Richmond Ditpatch. 
 
 " We recommend it to our readers as supplying in a compact and connected 
 form a mass of information drawn from various sources, some of which are 
 not easy of access, to the general reader, and digested with the tact of a piao- 
 tised chronicler of the times." — Charleston Mercury. 
 
 Price, FIVE DOLLARS. , 
 
 ff&jg" On re '.eipt of the price we will mail the book (post paid) to any part 
 of the Confederate Sjates. 
 
 WEST & JOHNSTON, 
 
 145 Main Street, Richmond. 
 
 9 "*