ready at the present moment for active operations
in the field, while they are not. We ought to invade their country
now, and not wait for them to make the necessary preparations to
invade ours. If the President would reinforce this army by taking
troops from other points not threatened, and let us make an active
campaign of invasion before winter sets in, McClellan's raw recruits
could not stand against us in the field.

"'Crossing the Upper Potomac, occupying Baltimore, and taking
possession of Maryland, we could cut off the communications of
Washington, force the Federal Government to abandon the capital, beat
McClellan's army if it came out against us in the open country,
destroy industrial establishments wherever we found them, break up
the lines of interior commercial intercourse, close the coal-mines,
seize and, if necessary, destroy the manufactories and commerce of
Philadelphia, and of other large cities in our reach; take and hold
the narrow neck of country between Pittsburg and Lake Erie; subsist
mainly the country we traverse, and making unrelenting war amidst
their homes, force the people of the North to understand what it will
cost them to hold the South in the Union at the bayonet's point.'

"He then requested me to use my influence with Generals Johnston and
Beauregard in favour of immediate aggressive operations. I told him
that I was sure that an attempt on my part to exert any influence in
favour of his proposition would do no good. Not content with my
answer he repeated his arguments, dwelling more at length on the
advantages of such strategy to ourselves and its disadvantages to the
enemy, and again urged me to use my influence to secure its adoption.
I gave him the same reply I had already made.

"After a few minutes' thought he abruptly said: 'General, you have
not expressed any opinion in regard to the views I have laid before
you. But I feel assured that you favour them, and I think you ought
to do all in your power to have them carried into effect.'

"I then said, 'I will tell you a secret.'

"He replied, 'Please do not tell me any secret. I would prefer not to
hear it.' I answered, 'I must tell it to you, and I have no
hesitation in doing so, because I am certain that it will not be
divulged.' I then explained to him that these views had already been
laid before the Government, in a conference which had taken place at
Fairfax Court House, in the first days of October, between President