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246 staying there, in spite of all efforts to dislodge them, that did not promise at all well for the future of the cause.

Were it not that the news from Virginia was in some degree encouraging, I should have been almost willing to have concluded, that we were indeed nearing the fest ditch, which some of our orators were so fond of alluding to. There, how ever, the Confederate soldiers were indeed winning laurels, and the capture of Richmond was as apparently as far off as it was when I turned my back upon it to seek my fortune in the West. If our brave boys under Lee, therefore, could only improve the summer as the winter had been improved in the West by the Federals, there would be some hope that, after all, we might win the desperate game we were playing, and accomplish substantially all for which we took up arms. In the mean time, however, things were in a bad way in many respects in the beleaguered Confederacy. The coast blockade was now fully established, and the enemy's lines were drawn so close along the principal avenues of communication with the outside world and the interior, that our commerce was completely killed, and our people were already suffering for many of the necessities of life, while the requirements of warfare with a powerful enemy, amply provided with resources, were impoverishing them more and more every day. Whole districts had been devastated by the manœuvrings of the different armies, and the suffering among the poorer classes throughout the entire South was very great, while many persons, who were possessed of ample wealth before the war, were now feeling the pinchings of poverty, and were learning what it was not to know where the next meal was coming from. It was truly a pitiable condition of affairs; and the worst of it was, that there was no promise of speedy amendment. If these were the results of one year of warfare, what would be the condition of things, should the conflict be prolonged for another twelvemonth ? Alas ! it was prolonged, not for one more year merely, but for three ; and when the dreadful day of total irremediable defeat to which some of us, at the time which I am now referring to, were already uneasily and unwillingly looking forward finally came, the South was literally exhausted, as no other country ever had been before.