Four Years in Rebel Capitals / An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death

by T. C. De Leon

These thinkers saw that some branches of the Government still kept up its preparations. Throughout the length of the land foundries were going up, and every improvement that science or experience could suggest was making in the construction of arms and ammunition; water-power, everywhere off the line of attack, was utilized for powder-mills and rope-walks; every cloth factory in the country was subsidized; and machinery of great variety and power was being imported on Government account. Over Richmond constantly hung a dense cloud of coal smoke; and the incessant buzz of machinery from factories, foundries and lathes, told of increased rather than abated effort in that branch of the Government. Then, too, the most perfect confidence was felt in the great strategic ability of General Johnston—who had already found that high level in the opinion of his countrymen, from which neither the frowns of government, the combination of cliques, nor the tongues of slanderers could afterward remove him.

They believed, too, in the pluck and dash of Beauregard; and, combining this with the outside activity, evident in every direction, felt there must be good and sufficient reason for the—to them—inexplicable quiet about the Potomac.

But perhaps the very worst feature was the effect of the victory upon the tone of the people at large. The very tongues that had wagged most impatiently at the first delay—that had set in motion the wild stories by which to account for it—had been the first to become blatant that the North was conquered. The minutest details of the fight were carried over the land, repeated at country courts and amplified at bar-room assemblages, until the common slang was everywhere heard that one Southron was equal to a dozen Yanks. Instead of using the time, so strangely given by the Government, in making earnest and steady strides toward increasing the army, improving its morale and adding to its supplies, the masses of the country were upon a rampage of boastfulness, and the notes of an inflated triumph rang from the Potomac to the Gulf.

In this regard the effect of the victory was most injurious; and had it not been for the crushing results—from a strategic point of view—that would have followed it, partial defeat might have proved a blessing in its place.

The one, while it threw a gloom over the country, would have nerved the people to renewed exertion and made them look steadily and unwaveringly at the true dangers that threatened them. The other gave them time to fold their hands and indulge in a complacency, ridiculous as it was enervating.

They ceased to realize the vast resources of the Union in men, money and supplies; and more than all, they underrated the dogged perseverance of Yankee character. It was as though a young boxer, in a deadly conflict with a giant, had dealt a staggering blow; and while the Titan braced his every muscle for a deadlier gripe, the weaker antagonist wasted his time lauding his strength and feeling his biceps.

Meantime, the keen, hard sense of the Washington Government wasted no time in utilizing the reaction on its people. The press and the public clamored for a victim, and General Scott was thrown into its maw unhesitatingly. The old hero was replaced by the new, and General McClellan—whose untried and inexperienced talent could hardly have augured his becoming, as he did, the best general of the northern army—was elevated to his place to please the "dear public."

The rabid crowds of men and men-women—whose prurient curiosity had driven them to follow the great on-to-Richmond, with hopes of a first view of the triumphant entry of the Grand Army—soon forgot their uncomfortable and terrified scramble to the rear. They easily changed their whine of terror to a song of triumph; and New England Judiths, burning to grasp the hair of the Holofernes over the Potomac, pricked the flagging zeal of their male companions.

The peculiar error that they were fighting for the Union and the flag—so cruelly dissipated of late—threw thousands into the ranks; heavy bounties and hopes of plunder drew many more; and the still frequent interstices were filled with many an Irish-German amalgam, that was supposed to be peculiarly good food for powder.

And so the summer wore on, the demoralizing influence of the inaction in the camps of the South increasing toward its close. The affair at Leesburg, occurring on the 20th of October, was another brilliant success, but equally barren of results. It showed that the men would still fight as readily and as fiercely, and that their officers would lead them as gallantly, as before; it put a few hundred of the enemy hors de combat and maintained "the right of way" by the river to the South. But it was the occasion for another shout of triumph—perfectly incommensurate with its importance—to go up from the people; and it taught them still more to despise and underrate the power of the government they had so far successfully and brilliantly defied.