Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[659] Virginia. To the presiding officer of her Legislature, he wrote: “Your assurance is to me a source of the highest gratification; and while conveying to you my thanks for the expression of the confidence of the General Assembly in my sincere devotion to my country and sacred cause, I must beg permission, in return, to bear witness to the uncalculating, unhesitating spirit with which Virginia has, from the moment when she first drew the sword, consecrated the blood of her children and all her material resources to the achievement of the object of our struggle.”

If the spirit of Virginia had animated the entire Confederacy, a cause now prostrate might have been still erect and in arms, and perhaps triumphant. For after all, the main condition of the success of the Confederacy was simply resolution, the quality that endures; and as long as the people were resolved to be free, there was no military power that could have been summoned by the enemy, to bring under subjection a country occupying so many square miles, and so wild and difficult as that of the South. The mind may easily discover many causes that concurred in the decline and downfall of the Southern Confederacy, and contributed something to the catastrophe; but one rises uppermost, and, for the purposes of the explanation, is sufficient and conclusive — the general demoralization of the people, and that demoralization consequent upon such a want of confidence in the administration of President Davis, as was never before exhibited between a people and its rulers in a time of revolution. He who takes broad and enlightened views of great historical results, and is not satisfied to let his mind rest on secondary causes and partial explanations, will ascribe the downfall of the Southern Confederacy to a general breaking down of the public virtue, and the debasement of a people who, having utterly lost hope in their rulers, and having no heart for a new experiment, descend to tame and infamous submission to what they consider fortune.

We may properly add here some considerations of an extraordinary measure to restore the fortunes of the Confederacy, indicative, indeed, of the desperate condition of the country, and of the disposition of the government to catch at straws. Throughout the entire session of the last Congress in Richmond there was an ill-natured debate of a proposition to arm the slaves, and thus repair the strength and organization of the armies. The circumstances in which this proposition was discussed showed plainly enough that the yield of the conscription law had been practically exhausted, and were the occasion of prejudicial dissensions, which contributed to the overthrow of the Confederacy. It may easily be calculated that out of three million slaves, two hundred thousand might have been spared, and brought into the field. This addition, if made some time ago, might have turned the scale in favour of the South, considering how evenly the balance hung in the early campaigns of the war. But the time for this measure was past; soldiers could not be improvised;