army and the men who
controlled it; as a fact no suggestion of peace or compromise came from
them; if it ever came, the people should know it. In equally simple
terms he sought to justify, even to supporters of the Union who did not
share his "wish that all men could be free," his policy in regard to
emancipation. In any case, freedom had for the sake of the Union been
promised to negroes who were now fighting or working for the North, "and
the promise being made must be kept." As that most critical year of the
war drew to a close there was a prevailing recognition that the rough but
straight path along which the President groped his way was the right
path, and upon the whole he enjoyed a degree of general favour which was
not often his portion.

3. _The War in 1864_.

It is the general military opinion that before the war entered on its
final stage Jefferson Davis should have concentrated all his forces for a
larger invasion of the North than was ever in fact undertaken. In the
Gettysburg campaign he might have strengthened Lee's army by 20,000 men
if he could have withdrawn them from the forts at Charleston.
Charleston, however, was threatened during 1863 by the sea and land
forces of the North, in an expedition which was probably itself unwise,
as Lincoln himself seems to have suspected, but which helped to divert a
Confederate army. In the beginning of 1864 Davis still kept this force
at Charleston; he persisted also in keeping a hold on his own State,
Mississippi, with a further small army; while Longstreet still remained
in the south-east corner of Tennessee, where a useful employment of his
force was contemplated but none was made. The chief Southern armies with
which we have to deal are that of Lee, lying south of the Rapidan, and
that of Bragg, now superseded by Joseph Johnston, at Dalton, south of
Chattanooga. The Confederacy, it is thought, was now in a position in
which it might take long to reduce it, but the only military chance for
it was concentration on one great counter-stroke. This seems to have
been the opinion of Lee and Longstreet. Jefferson Davis clung, even late
in the year 1864, to the belief that disaster must somehow overtake any
invading Northern army which pushed far. Possibly he reckoned also that
the North would weary of the repeated checks in the process of conquest.
Indeed, as will be seen later, the North came near to doing so, while a
serious invasion of the North, unless