shaken lines, enveloping whole units with converging fire, and
taking prisoners in mass. After a last wild effort Hood's beaten
army fled, having lost fifteen thousand men, five times as much
as Thomas.

The battle of Nashville came nearer than any other to being a really
annihilating victory. Out of the forty thousand men Hood had at
first in Tennessee not half escaped; and of the remainder not nearly
half were ever seen in arms again. As an organized force his army
simply disappeared. The few thousands saved from the wreckage of
the storm found their painful way east to join all that was left
for the last stand against the overwhelming forces of the North.

CHAPTER XII

THE END: 1865

By '65 the Southern cause was lost. There was nothing to hope for
from abroad. Neither was there anything to hope for at home, now
that Lincoln and the Union Government had been returned to power.
From the very first the disparity of resources was so great that
the South had never had a chance alone except against a disunited
North. Now that the North could bring its full strength to bear
against the worn-out South the only question remaining to be settled
in the field was simply one of time. Yet Davis, with his indomitable
will, would never yield so long as any Confederates would remain
in arms. And men like Lee would never willingly give up the fight
so long as those they served required them. Therefore the war went
on until the Southern armies failed through sheer exhaustion.

The North had nearly a million men by land and sea. The South had
perhaps two hundred thousand. The North could count on a million
recruits out of the whole reserve of twice as many. The South had no
reserves at all. The total odds were therefore five to one without
reserves and ten to one if these came in.

The scene of action, for all decisive purposes, had shrunk again,
and now included nothing beyond Virginia and the Carolinas; and
even there the Union forces had impregnable bases of attack. When
Wilmington fell in January the only port still left in Southern
hands was Charleston; and that was close-blockaded. Fighting
Confederates still remained in the lower South. But victories like
Olustee, Florida, barren in '64, could not avail them now, even
if they had the troops to win them. The lower South was now as
much isolated as the trans-Mississippi. Between its blockaded and
garrisoned coast on one side and its sixty-mile swath of devastation