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

1 On the day when the loyal people were assembled for the purposes set forth in this proclamation, so glowing with the spirit of Christianity, an official address by the leader of the Conspirators, at Richmond, was read to the soldiers of Lee's army, then confronting Meade's on the Rappahannock, in which the following paragraph occurred: “Your enemy continues a struggle, in which our final triumph must be inevitable. Unduly elated with their recent successes, they imagine that temporary reverses can quell your spirits or shake your determination, and they are now gathering heavy masses for a general invasion, in the vain hope that by desperate efforts success may at length be reached. You know too well, my countrymen, what they mean by success. Their malignant rage aims at nothing less than the extermination of yourselves, your wives, and your children. They seek to destroy what they cannot plunder. They propose as spoils of victory that your homes shall be partitioned among wretches whose atrocious cruelty has stamped infamy on their government. They design to incite servile insurrection and light the fires of incendiarism whenever they can reach your homes, and they debauch an inferior race, heretofore docile and contented, by promising them the indulgence of the evilest passions as the price of their treachery. Conscious of their inability to prevail by legitimate warfare, not daring to make peace, lest they should be hurled from their seats of power, the men who now rule in Washington refuse even to confer on the subject of putting an end to outrages which disgrace our age, or listen to a suggestion for conducting the war according to the usages of civilization.”

No man in the Confederacy knew better than Robert E. Lee, the willing associate of the Conspirators in crime, the absolute untruthfulness of the charges with which that paragraph was burdened; yet, in obedience to the diabolical spirit which incited the rebellion, he allowed his soldiers and the people to be thus deceived and wronged, that he might, aided by a merciless conscription then in operation, fill his shattered army, and to make the soldiers fight with the idea that they were contending with cruel savages, who deserved no quarter. The raising of the black flag could not have been more wicked in intent.

Davis's address, countersigned by Judah P. Benjamin, was dated August 1, 1863. The allusion in the closing sentence of the above paragraph is explained by the fact that, on the 4th of July, when Davis felt confident that Lee was victorious at Gettysburg, instead of preparing to fly before a conquering army, as he really was, he sent Alexander H. Stephens, “Vice-President” of the Confederacy, to Fortress Monroe, with instructions to proceed to Washington and lay before the President “a communication in writing from Jefferson Davis, Commander-in-Chief of the land and naval forces of the Confederate States, to Abraham Lincoln, Commander-in-Chief of the land and naval forces of the United States.” Stephens proceeded to Fortress Monroe in the flag-of-truce boat, and said in a note addressed to Admiral S. H. Lee, “I desire to proceed directly to Washington in the steamer Torpedo.” Lee referred the matter to the Secretary of the Navy, who refused to allow Stephens to go to Washington, the customary channels for communication being all that was needful.

Stephens's mission seemed to have a twofold object, namely, to seek, by an official reception at Washington, a recognition by the Government of the existence of a real government at Richmond; also if Lee (as it was expected he would by the time Stephens should reach the capital) was marching in triumph on Philadelphia, to demand peace upon terms of the absolute independence of the “Confederate States.” A “Rebel War Clerk,” in his diary, under date of July 10th, wrote: “We know all about the mission of Vice-President Stephens. It was <*>ll-timed for success. At Washington news had been received of the defeat of General Lee.” On the 16th he recorded: “Again the Enquirer, edited by Mitchell, the Irishman, is urging the President to seize arbitrary power.” On that day news reached Richmond that Lee had been driven across the Potomac.

2 According to a report of Memminger, the Confederate “Secretary of the Treasury,” the Confederate debt, on the 24th of August, 1863, was over $600,000,000, equally divided between Treasury notes, and bonds into which currency had been funded.