Dixie Betrayed by David J. Eicher

Author:David J. Eicher [EICHER, DAVID J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316075718
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-05-30T04:00:00+00:00

At no previous period of the war have our forces been so numerous, so well organized, and so thoroughly disciplined, armed, and equipped as at present. Disaster has been the result of their [Union forces’] every effort to turn or to storm Vicksburg and Port Hudson, as well as of every attack on our batteries on the Red River, the Tallahatchie, and other navigable streams. Within a few weeks the falling waters and the increasing heat of summer will complete their discomfiture and compel their baffled and defeated forces to the abandonment of expeditions on which was based their chief hope of subjugation. 19

Privately, however, the president knew how fragile the war standing was on several fronts. Joe Johnston, having returned to the field, reported from Tennessee. “Should all, or a large part of [Grant’s] troops, come into middle Tennessee,” he wrote the president, “this army would be forced to leave it. We can not attack now with probability of success & should strong reinforcements arrive, we could not hold our ground against the Federal army.” 20

Davis also received alarming news from governors, none more so than from Zebulon Vance of North Carolina. “I receive information from our Generals in the field that desertion is alarmingly on the increase in the army,” Vance wrote, and went on,

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