ident as an inexorably self-willed man who will see the
country to the devil before giving up an opinion or a purpose." This
deliberate fostering of an anti-Davis spirit might seem less malicious
if the fact were not known that many editors detested Davis because of
his desire to abolish the exemption of editors from conscription.
Their ignoble course brings to mind one of the few sarcasms recorded of
Lee--the remark that the great mistake of the South was in making all
its best military geniuses editors of newspapers. But it must be added
in all fairness that the great opposition journals, such as the Mercury,
took up this new issue with the President because they professed to see
in his attitude toward the press a determination to suppress freedom of
speech, so obsessed was the opposition with the idea that Davis was
a monster! Whatever explanations may be offered for the prevalence of
graft, the impotence of the Government at Richmond contributed to
the general demoralization. In regions like Georgia and Alabama, the
Confederacy was now powerless to control its agents. Furthermore,
in every effort to assume adequate control of the food situation the
Government met the continuous opposition of two groups of opponents--the
unscrupulous parasites and the bigots of economic and constitutional
theory. Of the activities of the first group, one incident is sufficient
to tell the whole story. At Richmond, in the autumn of 1864, the grocers
were selling rice at two dollars and a half a pound. It happened that
the Governor of Virginia was William Smith, one of the strong men of
the Confederacy who has not had his due from the historians. He saw
that even under the intolerable conditions of the moment this price was
shockingly exorbitant. To remedy matters, the Governor took the State of
Virginia into business, bought rice where it was grown, imported it, and
sold it in Richmond at fifty cents a pound, with sufficient profit to
cover all costs of handling.

Nevertheless, when Smith urged the Virginia Legislature to assume
control of business as a temporary measure, he was at once assailed by
the second group--those martinets of constitutionalism who would not
give up their cherished Anglo-Saxon tradition of complete individualism
in government. The Administration lost some of its staunchest supporters
the moment its later organ, the Sentinel, began advocating the general
regulation of prices. With ruin staring them in the face,