Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/479

Rh ship of war, subsequently doing great damage to Federal commerce.

The Confederate war department was now the center of busy and extensive preparations to meet the evidently powerful invasions of the South from all available points of its circumference toward and into the centers of its territory. General Lee was placed in charge of military affairs on the 13th of March. All furloughs for whatever cause were revoked by a general order issued by Adjutant and Inspector-General S. Cooper. The order recited that &quot;the enemy presses on every side and the necessities of the service demand new illustrations of that noble self-denial which has been so many times evinced since the commencement of our struggle for independence.&quot; At Richmond it was acknowledged that the disasters we have suffered are mortifying to us and exhilarate our enemies, but they have startled without crippling the Confederacy. Severe criticism said, &quot;Had the government lain still two months more, with the army dwindling daily under the furlough system, disgusted with the inaction of stationary camps, while it was quarreling with the generals and the people sinking under indifference, we would have been overrun between the 15th of April and the first of May.&quot; The harshness of this censure merely reveals the impatient temper as well as the alarm of many who did not fully understand the difficulties which prevented a more aggressive conduct of the defensive war.

The efforts put forth by the Confederate war management to procure arms for the men already enlisted, appear pitiful in any present view of the appeals made for any arm that would serve the purpose of a military weapon. The ordnance department was wholly stripped at this early date of all supplies, and the government as an expedient only caused a call to be made by Mr. O. Dimmock, colonel of ordnance of Virginia, upon the people to sell their double barreled shot guns, sporting