y, the fearful
condition of the country permitted the granting of furloughs on a large
scale. Except on a few pikes, movements were impossible, and an army
could no more have marched across country than across Chesapeake bay.
Closet warriors in cozy studies, with smooth macadamized roadways before
their doors, sneer at the idea of military movements being arrested by
mud. I apprehend that these gentlemen have never served in a bad country
during the rainy season, and are ignorant of the fact that, in his
Russian campaign, the elements proved too strong for the genius of
Napoleon.

General Johnston met the difficulties of his position with great
coolness, tact, and judgment; but his burden was by no means lightened
by the interference of certain politicians at Richmond. These were
perhaps inflamed by the success that had attended the tactical efforts
of their Washington peers. At all events, they now threw themselves upon
military questions with much ardor. Their leader was Alexander H.
Stephens of Georgia, Vice-President of the Confederacy, who is entitled
to a place by himself.

Like the celebrated John Randolph of Roanoke, Mr. Stephens has an acute
intellect attached to a frail and meagre body. As was said by the witty
Canon of St. Paul's of Francis Jeffrey, his mind is in a state of
indecent exposure. A trained and skillful politician, he was for many
years before the war returned to the United States House of
Representatives from the district in which he resides, and his "device"
seems always to have been, "Fiat justitia, ruat coelum." When, in
December, 1849, the Congress assembled, there was a Whig administration,
and the same party had a small majority in the lower House, of which Mr.
Stephens, an ardent Whig, was a member; but he could not see his way to
support his party's candidate for Speaker, and this inability to find a
road, plain mayhap to weaker organs, secured the control of the House to
his political adversaries. During the exciting period preceding
"secession" Mr. Stephens held and avowed moderate opinions; but, swept
along by the resistless torrent surrounding him, he discovered and
proclaimed that "slavery was the corner-stone of the confederacy." In
the strong vernacular of the West, this was "rather piling the agony" on
the humanitarians, whose sympathies were not much quickened toward us
thereby. As the struggle progressed, Mr. Stephens, with all the
impartiality of an equity judge, marked many