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 ii6 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS

was divided between theoretical advance and practical retreat, most skillfully conducted. When Bragg was given the command, his predecessor employed his days of invalid leisure in evolving dazzling outlines of grand strategy, which, as I have said, he was generous enough to offer to the War Department. Here they are, in brief. " You ask what should be done to end this exhausting war [May, 1863]. We must take the offensive, as you suggest ; not by abandoning all other points, however, but by a proper selection of the point of attack — the Yankees themselves tell us where. I see by the papers of this morning that Vallandigham is being sent into Bragg' s lines. Hooker is disposed of for the next six months at least. Well, let Lee act on the defensive, and send to Bragg 30,000 men for him to take the offensive with at once ; let him (or whoever is put in his place) [Beauregard ?] destroy or capture (as it is done in Eu- rope) Rosecrans* army ; then march into Kentucky, raise 30,000 more men there and in Tennessee ; then get into Ohio, and call upon the friends of Vallandigham to rise for his defense and support ; then call upon Indiana, Il- linois, and Missouri to throw off the yoke of the accursed Yankee nation ; then upon the whole Northwest to join in the movement, form a Confederacy of their own, and join us by a treaty of alliance offensive and defensive. What would then become of the North East ? How long would it take us to bring it back to its senses ? As I have once written you, 'Battles without diplomacy

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