Confidence of the Army of Northern Virginia.
Such was the retrospect of this thirty days campaign to
Lee, as he sat in his simple tent pitched upon the very ground, whence, but two years before, with positions reversed, he had driven
McClellan in rout and disaster to the
James; and though
Lee the man was modest, he was but mortal, and
Lee the soldier could but be conscious of his own genius, and having proved the matchless temper of the blade, which
Providence, or Destiny, or call it what you will, had placed within his hands, we may be sure that his heart was stirred with high hopes of his country's deliverance, and that through these hopes his pliant genius was inspired to discern in each new difficulty but fresh device.
And his veterans of confirmed hardihood, watching the gracious serenity of that noble face, conscious of the same warlike virtues whch made him dear to them, caught up and reflected this confidence, remembering that he had declared to them in general orders after
Spotsylvania: “It is in your power, under God, to defeat the last effort of the enemy, establish the independence of your native land, and earn the lasting love and gratitude of your countrymen and the admiration of mankind.”
1
And to an army intelligent as it was resolute, there was surely
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much to confirm this confidence, outside enthusiastic trust in the resources of their leader.
The sobering consciousness of instant peril had quickened their discernment, and the patient watchers in the swamps of
Chickahominy, no longer deluded by the
ignis fatuus of foreign intervention, hopes of which had been kindled anew in the
Capital by the fiery speech of the
Marquis of
Clanricarde, regarded only, but with eager exultation, the signs in camp and country of the enemy.
Mr. Seward's thirty days draft on victory, though given to a superb army for collection, and endorsed by the credulity of the nation, had gone to protest, and
Mr. Lincoln now signified his intention of calling for 500,000 additional men to enforce its payment.
2
No censorship of the press could restrain the clamorous discontent which burst forth North and West at this proposed call for half a million more men, and
