along the wayside as memorials of the
first battle. At the close of the day Jefferson Davis, Beauregard,
Johnston, and "Stonewall" Jackson, who won his proud soubriquet on that
famous field, held a conference and decided not to follow the Federals
to Washington that evening. On the morrow a heavy rain fell and the
roads of northern Virginia became impassable for a week. The defeated
forces had time to regain their composure while the people of both
sections began to see what war meant.

The Southerners rejoiced and celebrated, even relaxed their
preparations, thinking their valor vastly superior to that of their
enemies. President Davis was less confident, and pressed upon his
Congress the better organization of the armies, whose numbers now
mounted to 400,000 men; he sent James M. Mason and John Slidell as
commissioners to Europe, and ordered troops under Robert E. Lee to West
Virginia to save that recalcitrant region to Virginia and the
Confederacy. In the absence of a revenue, and already shut off from the
markets of both the North and Europe, the Confederates resorted to loans
and the issue of paper money to meet the enormous expenses of war. The
Confederate Government borrowed hundreds of millions from the planters,
and the States likewise piled up debts in unprecedented fashion in
maintenance of the same great cause. Of gold and silver there was
little; the banks had long since suspended specie payments, but
increased their issues of notes. The cotton crop, then being harvested
by the negroes, and the grain and cattle of the hill country were the
chief resources. The paper money of the Government was paid to soldiers,
farmers, and planters for their services and supplies, and this was
given back to the Government in exchange for interest-bearing bonds that
were issued. With a European market for the planters' products the
system might easily have been successful; but this one essential to
victory failed, or waited upon military success.

The first general election came on in the late autumn. Under the
stimulus of the victory at Manassas, or Bull Run, Davis and Stephens
were elected President and Vice-President without opposition for terms
of six years. New Senators and Representatives were chosen, generally
from the ranks of conservative politicians, for the sessions of the
regular Confederate Congress, which was to supersede the provisional
congress and government on Washington's birthday, 1862. The judiciary of