Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[18] containing citizens' clothing, in which the latter might escape from the service. Great numbers fled in these disguises.

At the time we are considering (close of January, 1863), Hooker found the number of absentees to be two thousand nine hundred and twenty-two commissioned officers, and eighty-one thousand nine hundred and sixty-four

Fredericksburg in the Spring of 1863.1

non-commissioned officers and privates.² These were scattered all over the country, and were everywhere met and influenced by the politicians opposed to the war. These politicians, and especially the faction known as the Peace Party, taking advantage of the public disappointment caused by the ill-success of the armies under McClellan and Buell in the summer and early autumn of 1862, had charged all failures to suppress the rebellion to the inefficiency of the Government, whose hands they had continually striven to weaken. They had succeeded in spreading general alarm and distrust among the people; and, during the despondency that prevailed after the failure of the campaign of the Army of the Potomac, ending in inaction after the Battle of Antietam,³ and of the Army of the Ohio in Kentucky, when Bragg and his, forces were allowed to escape to a stronghold near Nashville,⁴ elections were held in ten Free-labor States, and, in the absence of the votes of the soldiers (two-thirds of whom were friends of the administration), resulted in favor of the Opposition. In these ten States Mr. Lincoln's majority in 1860 was 208,066. In 1862, the Opposition not only overcame this, but secured a majority of 35,781.

The expectation of conscription to carry on the contest, increased taxation, high prices of fabrics and food, and a depreciated currency were made powerful instruments in turning the public mind to thoughts of peace by means of compromise; especially when, after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, the Peace Faction, assuming to speak for the entire Opposition, declared, with seeming plausibility, that “the war for the preservation ”