be satisfied with any concessions he would recommend.  That the politicians had had their say, now let the soldiers terminate the strife which politicians had begun.  That Napoleon while in Italy, against all precedent and without the knowledge of the civil department, had entered into negotiations with the enemy, made peace, and while distasteful to the authorities, they were too polite to refuse the terms.  But General Lee was too much a soldier to consider any act outside of his special prerogatives.  He, however, was pleased with the idea, and wrote General Grant, asking an interview looking towards negotiations of peace.  But General Grant, from his high ideals of the duty and dignity of a soldier, refused, claiming that the prerogatives of peace or war were left with the civil, not the military arm of the service.  So it all ended in smoke.

General Lee began making preparations to make still greater efforts and greater sacrifices.  He had been hampered, as well as many others of our great commanders, by the quixotic and blundering interference of the authorities at Richmond, and had become accustomed to it.  There can be no question at this late day that the end, as it did come, had long since dawned upon the great mind of Lee, and it must have been with bitterness that he was forced to sacrifice so many brave and patriotic men for a shadow, while the substance could never be reached.  His only duty now was to prolong the struggle and sacrifice as few men as possible.

General Bragg, that star of ill omen to the Confederacy, was taken out of the War Department in Richmond and sent to Wilmington, N.C., and that brilliant, gallant Kentuckian, General John C. Breckenridge, was placed in his stead as Secretary of War.  General Breckenridge had been the favorite of a great portion of the Southern people in their choice of Presidential candidates against Lincoln, and his place in the cabinet of Mr. Davis gave hope and confidence to the entire South.

General Lee, no doubt acting on his own good judgment, and to the greatest delight of the army, placed General Joseph E. Johnston at the head of the few scattered and disorganized bands that were following on the flanks of Sherman.  Some few troops that could be spared from the trenches were to be sent to South Carolina to swell, as far as possible, the army to oppose Sherman.

Governor Brown had called out a great part of the Georgia State Troops, consisting of old men and boys, to the relief of General Hardee, who was moving in the front of Sherman, and a great many of this number crossed over with General Hardee to the eastern side of the Savannah, and remained faithful to the end.  Governor McGrath, of South Carolina, too, had called out every man capable of bearing arms from fifteen to sixty, and placed them by regiments under Beauregard and Johnston.  The forts along the coast in great numbers were abandoned, and the troops thus gathered together did excellent service.  North Carolina brought forward her reserves as the enemy neared her border, all determined to unite in a mighty effort to drive back this ruthless invader.