y and people.

Enraged by the defeat of their mad schemes, the conspirators drew
together now to depose Davis and set up a military dictatorship.

CHAPTER XL

IN SIGHT OF VICTORY

When Grant crossed the Rapidan with his army of one hundred forty-one
thousand one hundred and sixty men Lee faced him with sixty-four
thousand. The problem of saving Richmond from the tremendous force under
the personal command of the most successful general of the North was not
the only danger which threatened the Confederate Capital. Butler was
pressing from the Peninsula with forty thousand men along the line of
McClellan's old march, supported again by the navy.

Jefferson Davis knew the task before Lee to be a gigantic one yet he did
not believe that Grant would succeed in reaching Richmond.

The moment the Federal general crossed the Rapidan and threw his army
into the tangled forest of the Wilderness, Lee sprang from the jungles
at his throat.

Battle followed battle in swift and terrible succession. At Cold Harbor
thirty days later the climax came. Grant lost ten thousand men in twenty
minutes. The Northern general had set out to hammer Lee to death by
steady, remorseless pounding. At the end of a month he had lost more
than sixty thousand men and Lee's army was as strong as when the fight
began.

Grant's campaign to take Richmond was the bloodiest and most tragic
failure in the history of war. The North in bitter anguish demanded his
removal from command. Lincoln stubbornly refused to interfere with his
bulldog fighter. He sent him word to hold on and chew and choke.

As Grant in his whirl of blood approached the old battle grounds of
McClellan, Davis rode out daily to confer with Lee. He was never more
cheerful--never surer of the safety of his Capital. His faith in God and
the certainty that he would in the end give victory to a cause so just
and holy grew in strength with the report from each glorious field. No
doubt of the right or justice of his cause ever entered his mind. Day
and night he repeated the lines of his favorite hymn:

"I'll strengthen thee, help thee and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by my righteous omnipotent hand."

Again and again he said to his wife half in soliloquy, half in exalted
prayer:

"We can conquer a peace against the world in arms and keep the rights of
freemen if we are worthy of the privilege!"

The spirit which animated the patriotic soldiers who followed their
comma