, "did you see him take it off?" I said yes. "Well,"
said he, "didn't you think it was the biggest shuck and the littlest ear
that ever you did see?" Long afterwards I told this story to the
Confederate General J. B. Gordon, at the time a member of the Senate.
He repeated it to Stephens, and, as I heard afterwards, Stephens laughed
immoderately at the simile of Mr. Lincoln.

The rest of the winter, after the departure of the peace commissioners,
passed off quietly and uneventfully, except for two or three little
incidents. On one occasion during this period, while I was visiting
Washington City for the purpose of conferring with the administration,
the enemy's cavalry under General Wade Hampton, passing our extreme left
and then going to the south, got in east of us. Before their presence
was known, they had driven off a large number of beef cattle that were
grazing in that section. It was a fair capture, and they were
sufficiently needed by the Confederates. It was only retaliating for
what we had done, sometimes for many weeks at a time, when out of
supplies taking what the Confederate army otherwise would have gotten.
As appears in this book, on one single occasion we captured five
thousand head of cattle which were crossing the Mississippi River near
Port Hudson on their way from Texas to supply the Confederate army in
the East.

One of the most anxious periods of my experience during the rebellion
was the last few weeks before Petersburg. I felt that the situation of
the Confederate army was such that they would try to make an escape at
the earliest practicable moment, and I was afraid, every morning, that I
would awake from my sleep to hear that Lee had gone, and that nothing
was left but a picket line. He had his railroad by the way of Danville
south, and I was afraid that he was running off his men and all stores
and ordnance except such as it would be necessary to carry with him for
his immediate defence. I knew he could move much more lightly and more
rapidly than I, and that, if he got the start, he would leave me behind
so that we would have the same army to fight again farther south and the
war might be prolonged another year.

I was led to this fear by the fact that I could not see how it was
possible for the Confederates to hold out much longer where they were.
There is no doubt that Richmond would have been evacuated much sooner
than it was, if it had not been that it was the capital of the s