Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/554

516 tion for 500,000 troops was ready to go before the country, and notwithstanding the discouragement on account of the prolongation of war the North showed no weakening in purpose to at least maintain the integrity of the Union. Even the so-called &quot; Copperhead &quot; was as resolute on that point as the most vicious radical. The Southern side showed the army of Lee sustaining every assault and so far able to maintain the defense of Richmond against great odds as to permit the dispatching of Early and Breckinridge to drive Hunter from Lynchburg and to march to the Potomac where the Fourth of July found them ready to cross for the purpose of attacking Washington. Johnston had preserved his army and was crossing the Chattahoochee to defend Atlanta, at which point a concentration of State troops was contemplated. Kirby Smith, Taylor, Stephen D. Lee and Forrest were still in position to protect the West and even to advance northward if Sherman should be checked. The Confederacy was not yet exhausted and popular faith in success had not died out. The two great antagonists were thus confronted in July, 1864, with the possibilities of devastation, death and suffering such as only a civil war can cause, all of which were unhappily realized by the neglect of this opportunity to secure peace.

Even the political situation was in great degree favor able to an honest, patriotic effort at reconciliation. Only two conventions had been held, one of these representing the most irritating and vicious extremists of the North, who could be content with nothing except the degradation of the South at large by military subjugation, including the rape of its lands, the burglary of its homes, the murder of its leaders and the exile of its noble people. This mob which met on May 3ist, put Fremont at their head, and their action only intensified the critical favorableness of the hour for patriotism to act. The other convention which met in June at Baltimore, a Southern city, had actually discarded the name of the party that