ht. When no fighting was to
be done they should be at home attending to their families and their
business. The people were intelligent. They were patriotic. And they
were as good judges of the necessity of their presence with the colors
as the commanders of the armies. The generals were professional
soldiers. They fought for rank and pay and most of them had no property
in the South!

In the face of such doctrines proclaimed from so high a source it was
not to be wondered at if thousands of men obtained furloughs on long
leaves of absence. In the judgment of the intelligent and patriotic
people of the South the war was practically over. Why should they swell
the ranks of great armies to augment the power of military lords?

While these comfortable doctrines were being proclaimed in the South,
the North was drilling five hundred thousand soldiers who had enlisted
for three years.

The soreheads, theorists, and chronic kickers now had their supreme
opportunity to harass the President. They rallied behind the sulking
General and his friends and established a vigilant and malignant
opposition to Jefferson Davis in the Confederate Congress.

They centered their criticism naturally on the weakest spot in the new
Government--the weakest spot in all new nations--its financial policy.

They demanded the immediate purchase of all the cotton in the South and
its exportation to England as a basis of credit. They blithely ignored
two facts--that the Government had no money with which to purchase this
enormous quantity of the property of its people and the still more
important fact that the ports of the South had been blockaded, that this
blockade was becoming more and more effective and that blockade-runners
could not be found with sufficient tonnage to move one-tenth of the crop
if they were willing to risk capture and confiscation.

If the President could have met the members of his Congress in daily
social intercourse much of the opposition could have been cleared by his
close reasoning and the magnetism of his powerful personality. But under
the strain of his official life his health forbade the attempt at social
amenities.

He ceased to entertain except at formal receptions, gave himself body
and soul to his duties as President and allowed his critics full swing
with their tongues.

The Richmond _Examiner_ early developed into the leader of the reptile
press of the South which sought by all means fair or foul to break