the ears of certain officials, and not the slightest
impression was made. These gentlemen preferred to attribute all evils,
of the peculiar class which have just been mentioned, to the inherent
and wicked antipathy to discipline, which the cavalry (they declared)
entertained. They declared, moreover, that these articles could not be
procured. This excuse passed current until the latter part of the war,
when Federal raids and dashes disclosed the fact (by destroying or
cutting them off from our use) unknown to all but the officials and
employees, that hoarded and stored them away, at the very time that the
Confederate armies were melting away for the lack of them.

It is no answer to the charge of incompetency or malfeasance upon the
part of men charged with their distribution to say, that there was not
enough to supply the demand. They should have been made to go as far as
they would. It is difficult for one unfamiliar with the workings of
these departments and the obstacles in the way of procuring supplies, to
suggest a remedy for these shortcomings, but it is certain that the
Confederacy owned cotton and tobacco and could have gotten more; that
blockade running was active and could have been stimulated. An
abstinence from certain luxurious but costly experiments might have
enabled the Confederacy to buy more clothing, shoes, and meat. The
opinion is hazarded with diffidence, and is that of one who was
naturally prone to attach more importance to the sustenance of the
military than of the naval power of the Confederacy, but would it not
have been better to have expended upon the army the money paid for the
construction of those fine and high-priced iron-clads, which steamed
sportively about for a day or two after they left the stocks, and were
then inevitably scuttled?

The winter wore away, and the condition of affairs in Tennessee, as
described in the first part of this chapter, continued unchanged. Three
times the enemy advanced in heavy force (cavalry, infantry, and
artillery) to Liberty. Upon each occasion, the regiments stationed there
under Colonel Breckinridge, after skillfully and courageously contesting
his advance for many miles to the front of Liberty, fell back to Snow's
Hill, three miles to the east of it, and returned to press hard upon the
enemy's rear when he retired. At length, upon the 19th of March, when
Colonel Ward was absent with his regiment reconnoitering in the
direction of Carthage, and the