yet sever the bonds, ever closing tighter and tighter upon us.
And the rumor added that Mr. Davis peremptorily and definitely rejected
this counsel; declaring that he would hold the city, at any cost and
any risk.

For once--whatever cause they had to credit these reports--the popular
voice was louder on the side of the unpopular President than on that of
the idolized general. The tremendous efforts to capture the Capital;
the superhuman exertions made to defend it in the last four years, _had
made Richmond the cause_! People argued that if Richmond was lost, the
State of Virginia was lost, too; that there was no point in North
Carolina where the army could make a stand, for even that "interior
line" then became a frontier. Beyond this the people felt the moral
effect of such a step; and that the army, as such, could never be
carried out of Virginia. And with the ceaseless discussion of this
question, came the first yearnings for peace propositions.

To this extremity, the South had been confident and fixed in her views.
Cheated of her hopes of foreign intervention, she had yet believed her
ability to work out her own oracle; through blood and toil--even ruin,
perhaps--but still to force a peace at last. But now the popular voice
was raised in answer to the vague words of peace that found their way
over the Potomac. If there be any desire in the North for cessation of
this strife, said the people, for God's sake let us meet it half way.
Even the Congress seemed impressed with the necessity of meeting any
overtures from the North, before it was too late and our dire strait
should be known there. But it was already too late; and the resultless
mission of Mr. Stephens to Fortress Monroe proved that the Washington
Government now saw plainly that it could force upon us the terms it
made the show of offering.

The failure of this mission, no less than the great mystery in which
the Government endeavored to wrap it, produced a decided gloom among
the thinking classes; and it reacted upon the army as well. The
soldiers now began to lose hope for the first time. They saw they were
fighting a hydra; for as fast as they lopped off heads in any
direction, fresh ones sprang up in others. They began, for the first
time, to feel the contest unequal; and this depressing thought--added
to the still greater privations following the loss of Georgia--made
desertion fearfully common, and threatened to destroy, by that cause,
an army tha