eral Van Dorn, in the Southwest, threatened with suppression
any newspaper that published anything which might impair confidence in
a commanding officer. How could he have dared to do this, was the cry,
unless the President was behind him? And when General Bragg assumed a
similar attitude toward the press, the same cry was raised. Throughout
the summer of victories, even while the thrilling stories of Seven
Pines, the Peninsula, Second Manassas, were sounding like trumpets,
these mutterings of discontent formed an ominous accompaniment.

Yancey, speaking of the disturbed temper of the time, attributed it to
the general lack of information on the part of Southern people as to
what the Confederate Government was doing. His proposed remedy was an
end of the censorship which that Government was attempting to maintain,
the abandonment of the secret sessions of its Congress, and the taking
of the people into its full confidence. Now a Senator from Alabama, he
attempted, at the opening of the congressional session in the autumn
of 1862, to abolish secret sessions, but in his efforts he was not
successful.

There seems little doubt that the Confederate Government had blundered
in being too secretive. Even from Congress, much information was
withheld. A curious incident has preserved what appeared to the military
mind the justification of this reticence. The Secretary of War refused
to comply with a request for information, holding that he could not do
so "without disclosing the strength of our armies to many persons of
subordinate position whose secrecy cannot be relied upon." "I beg leave
to remind you," said he, "of a report made in response to a similar one
from the Federal Congress, communicated to them in secret session, and
now a part of our archives."

How much the country was in the dark with regard to some vital matters
is revealed by an attack on the Confederate Administration which was
made by the Charleston Mercury, in February. The Southern Government was
accused of unpardonable slowness in sending agents to Europe to purchase
munitions. In point of fact, the Confederate Government had been more
prompt than the Union Government in rushing agents abroad. But the
country was not permitted to know this. Though the Courier was a
government organ in Charleston, it did not meet the charges of the
Mercury by disclosing the facts about the arduous attempts of the
Confederate Government to secure arms in Europe. The reply