burg. 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.

General Judson Kilpatrick was authorized to select three thousand picked
cavalry, dash suddenly on Richmond, capture it and release the 15,000
Union prisoners confined in its walls and stockades.

These prisoners Grant steadily refused to receive in exchange. In vain
Davis besought the Federal Government to take them home in return for
an equal number of Confederate prisoners who were freezing and dying in
the North.

Grant's logic was inexorable. Every Confederate prisoner exchanged and
sent back home meant a recruit to Lee's army. It was cruel to leave his
men to languish in beleaguered Richmond whose citizens were rioting in
the streets for bread, but he figured these prisoners as soldiers dying
in battle. The Confederate Government had no medicine for them. The
blockade was drawn so tight scarcely an ounce of medicine could be
obtained for the Confederate army. Davis offered the Washington
Government to let their own surgeons come to Richmond and carry medicine
and food to their prisoners. His request wa