THE RAIDERS
In February, 1864, both North and South were straining every nerve for the last act of the grand drama of blood and tears. The Presidential election would be held in November to choose a successor to Abraham Lincoln. At this moment Lincoln was the most unpopular, the most reviled, the most misunderstood and the most abused man who had ever served as President of the United States. The opposition to him inside his own party was fierce, malignant, vindictive and would stop short of nothing to encompass his defeat in their nominating convention. They had not hesitated even to accuse his wife of treason.
Military success and military success alone could save the administration at Washington. George B. McClellan, the most popular general of the Union army, was already slated to oppose Lincoln on a platform demanding peace.
If the South could hold her own until the first Monday in November, the opposition to the war in the North would crush the administration and peace would be had at the price of Southern independence.
No man in America understood the tense situation more clearly than Jefferson Davis. His agents in the North kept him personally informed of every movement of the political chess board. Personally he had never believed in the possibility of the South winning in a conflict of arms since the death of Jackson had been given its full significance in the battle of Gettysburg. He had however believed in the possibility of the party of the North which stood for the old Constitution winning an election on the issue of a bloody and unsuccessful war and, on their winning, that he could open negotiations for peace and gain every point for which the war had been fought. It all depended on the battles of the coming spring and summer.
Grant, the new Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the Union, had been given a free hand with unlimited resources of men and money. He was now directing the movements of nearly a million soldiers in blue.
Sherman was drilling under his orders an army of a hundred thousand with which to march into Georgia—while Grant himself would direct the movement of a quarter of a million men in his invasion of Virginia.
The Confederate President saw at once that Lee's army must be raised to its highest point of efficiency and that it was of equal importance that Joseph E. Johnston should be given as many or more men with which to oppose Sherman.
To allow for Johnston's feeble strategy, Davis sent him 68,000 soldiers to Dalton, Georgia, to meet Sherman's 100,000 and gave Lee 64,000 with which to oppose Grant's 150,000 threatening to cross the Rapidan and move directly on Richmond.
Socola had informed the War Department at Washington that the Confederate Capital had been stripped of any semblance of an effective garrison to fill the ranks of Lee and Johnston.