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

[97] so loosely were military affairs managed, that deserters, stragglers, and absentees formed a very large proportion of the persons enrolled.

In view of these ugly facts and the discomfiture of the Confederate armies at nearly all points, Jefferson Davis issued another proclamation,

Aug. 1, 1863.

in which he urged the immediate return to the army of all absentees, and alleged that if one-fourth or one-half of them should do so, there would be sufficient strength to achieve the independence of the Confederacy. He offered to grant full amnesty and pardon to all who should immediately return to the ranks, excepting such as had been twice convicted of desertion. He appealed to the women, asking them to “take care that none who owe service in the field shall be sheltered at home from the disgrace of having deserted their duty to their families, to their country, and to their God.” But it had become a hard task to draw men back into the ranks by persuasion. No bounties seemed to have been offered after the passage of the Conscription Act in 1862, nor efforts made to fill up the ranks with volunteers. So the Conspirators used their usurped power with a high hand, and men and supplies were forced into the service at the point of the bayonet, as it were. An agent was appointed in every county to seize, if necessary, supplies for the use of the army; and at about the: close of 1863, the “Congress” at Richmond passed an act which declared every white man in the Confederacy, between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five years, to be in the military service, and subject to the articles of war and military discipline and penalties; and that upon failure to report for duty at a military station within a certain time, he was liable to the penalty of death as a deserter. The history of civilized nations has no parallel to this despotic act. Davis and his fellow-conspirators had then reached a critical point in their wicked game, and seemed willing to sacrifice every man, ruin; every family, waste all the property in the Confederacy, and see their section: of the Republic converted into a wilderness¹ in a desperate effort to win,, well knowing that failure would be ruin to themselves. They seemed to. regard the “common people” as of no account, excepting as docile instruments for the aggrandizement of the slave-holding Oligarchy.

Let us now return to a consideration of the movements of the armies of Meade and Lee, which we left occupying opposite banks of the Potomac.² We will first turn aside for a moment to observe some operations on the Virginia Peninsula, designed to be co-operative with the Army of the Potomac.

It had been determined early in the campaign to menace Richmond by a reoccupation of the Peninsula which McClellan evacuated the year before. General Keyes, then in the Department of Virginia, under the command of General Dix, had been selected as the leader of the forces that were to effect it. He concentrated a considerable body of troops at Yorktown, and so soon as it was ascertained that Lee was moving toward the Potomac, Keyes was directed to make a demonstration on Richmond, then held by a few troops under Henry A. Wise. Colonel Spear, with his Eleventh Pennsylvania and detachments of Massachusetts and Illinois cavalry, about one