Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/544

506 Pierce, Fillmore and Ewing commissioners to meet Confederate commissioners before hostilities commenced, to ascertain whether honorable peace may not be made, was voted down, yeas 26, nays 96. These and other resolutions offered in the U. S. Congress were forecasts of the issues on which the battle for political supremacy, now near at hand, was to be fought.

Preparations were meanwhile made during the winter for battle along all the lines of the interior of the Confederacy to which the Federal armies had penetrated, and with equal vigor the Confederates prepared for either offensive or defensive war, as they might have opportunity. The Confederate enrollment contained a few above 400,000 men, of whom it is stated that about one half were effective and in the field. The Federal force on duty at various places is officially reported as over a million men. This disparity of numbers though great, was less important than the difference in the resources of the two governments, and the only advantage which can be placed to the account of the South was its position as the defender of its soil.

The fighting opened for the year with surprising victories for the Southern armies. At Olustee, Florida, General Finegan and General Colquitt signally defeated General Seymour, and rescued a large part of that State. General Sherman had captured Meridian, in Mississippi, but was forced to beat a retreat to Vicksburg on account of the destruction of his cavalry by Forrest. In April Taylor attacked Banks at Mansfield, Louisiana, and drove him with great loss back to New Orleans. Hoke captured Plymouth, North Carolina, and the raid of Kilpatrick, with the disreputable accompaniment of the Dahlgren effort to burn Richmond and murder President Davis and his cabinet, were both defeated.

But these affairs did not affect the general course which military events were now taking. The two great armies of the Union, one in Virginia, the other in the West, in