* * * * *
In spite of all losses, in spite of four years of frightful carnage, in
spite of the loss of the Mississippi, the States of Louisiana and
Tennessee, the Confederacy was in sight of victory.
Lee had baffled Grant's great army at every turn and now held him
securely at bay before Petersburg. The North was mortally tired of the
bloody struggle. The party which demanded peace was greater than any
political division--it included thousands of the best men in the party
of Abraham Lincoln.
The nomination of General McClellan for President on a platform
declaring the war a failure and demanding that it end was a foregone
conclusion. Jefferson Davis knew this from inside information his
friends had sent from every section of the North.
The Confederacy had only to hold its lines intact until the first Monday
in November and the Northern voters would end the war.
The one point of mortal danger to the South lay in the mental structure
of Joseph E. Johnston, the man whom Davis had been persuaded, against
his better judgment, to appoint to the command of one of the greatest
armies the Confederacy had ever put into the field.
Johnston had been sent to Dalton, Georgia, and placed in command of
sixty-eight thousand picked Confederate soldiers with which to attack
and drive Sherman out of the lower South.
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