[49] N. and H. vi. 309, from MS.
[50] The act was signed by the President, March 3,
1863.
[51] Concerning the deterioration of the army, in
certain particulars, see an article, “The War
as we see it now,” by John C. Ropes, Scribner’s
Magazine, June, 1891.
THE TURN OF THE TIDE
The winter of 1862-63 was for the Rebellion much what
the winter of Valley Forge was for the Revolution.
It passed, however, and the nation still clung fast
to its purpose. The weak brethren who had become
dismayed were many, but the people as a whole was steadfast.
This being so, ultimate success became assured.
Wise and cool-headed men, in a frame of mind to contemplate
the situation as it really was, saw that the tide
was about at its turning, and that the Union would
not drift away to destruction in this storm at any
rate. They saw that the North could whip
the South, if it chose; and it was now sufficiently
evident that it would choose,—that it would
endure, and would finish its task. It was only
the superficial observers who were deceived by the
Virginian disasters, which rose so big in the foreground
as partially to conceal the real fact,—that
the Confederacy was being at once strangled and starved
to death. The waters of the Atlantic Ocean and
of the Gulf of Mexico were being steadily made more
and more inaccessible, as one position after another
along the coast gradually passed into Federal hands.
The Mississippi River, at last a Union stream from
its source to its mouth, now made a Chinese wall for
the Confederacy on the west. Upon the north the
line of conflict had been pushed down to the northern
borders of Mississippi and Georgia, and the superincumbent
weight of the vast Northwest lay with a deadly pressure
upon these two States.
It was, therefore, only in Virginia that the Confederates
had held their own, and here, with all their victories,
they had done no more than just hold their own.
They had to recognize, also, that from such battlefields
as Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville they gathered
no sustenance, however much they might reap in the
way of glory. Neither had they gained even any
ground, for the armies were still manoeuvring along
the same roads over which they had been tramping and
swaying to and fro for more than two years. By
degrees the Southern resources in the way of men,
money, food, and supplies generally, were being depleted.
The Confederacy was like a lake, artificially inclosed,
which was fed by no influx from outside, while it
was tapped and drained at many points.
