Chapter 39:
- How Sherman's march through Georgia developed a crisis in the Confederacy. -- geographical impossibility of the conquest of the South. -- address of the Confederate Congress. -- a vulgar and false estimate of the enemy's success. -- maps of conquest and cobweb lines of occupation. -- General decay of public spirit in the Confederacy. -- popular impatience of the war. -- want of confidence in President Davis' administration. -- bewildered attempts at counter-revolution. -- Executive mismanagement in Richmond. -- how the conscription law was cheated. -- deserters in the Confederate armies. -- peculiar causes for it. -- its frightful extent. -- how it was not a sign of infidelity to the Confederate cause. -- condition of the commissariat. -- bread taken from Gen. Lee's army to feed prisoners. -- alarming reduction of supplies. -- Major French's letter. -- Lee's troops bordering on starvation. -- eight points presented to Congress. -- what it did. -- the condition of the currency. -- Congress curtails the currency one-third. -- act of 17th February, 1864.secretary Seddon gives the coup-de-grace to the currency. -- his new standard of value in wheat at forty dollars a bushel. -- disorders of the currency and commissariat as contributing to desertions. -- impracticability of all remedies for desertions. -- no disaffection in the Confederacy, except with reference to faults of the Richmond administration. -- President Davis and the Confederate Congress, &c. -- three principal measures in Congress directed against the President. -- remonstrance of the Virginia delegation with reference to the Cabinet. -- resignation of Mr. Seddon.Personal relations between President Davis and Gen. Lee. -- why the latter declined to take command of all the armies of the Confederacy. -- want of self-assertion in Gen. Lee's character. -- why his influence in the General affairs of the Confederacy was negative. -- recrimination between President Davis and Congress. -- a singular item in the conscription Bureau. -- remark of Mrs. Davis to a Confederate Senator. -- the opposition led by Senator Wigfall. -- his terrible and eloquent invectives. -- a chapter of great oratory lost to the world. -- an apparent contradiction in the President's character. -- the influence of “small favourites.” -- John M. Daniel's opinion of President Davis' tears. -- influence of the President almost entirely gone in the last periods of the war. -- the visible wrecks of his administration. -- history of “peace propositions” in Congress. -- they were generalities. -- analysis of the Union party in the South. -- how Gov. Brown, of Georgia, was used by it. -- its persistent design upon the Virginia Legislature. -- how it was rebuffed. -- heroic choice of Virginia. -- President Davis' tribute to this State. -- want of resolution in other parts of the Confederacy. -- summary explanation of the decline and fall of the Confederacy. -- proposition to arm the slaves of the South indicative of a desperate condition. -- how it was impracticable and absurd. -- not five thousand spare muskets in the Confederacy. -- paltry legislation of Congress. -- Grasping at shadows
