It is the general military opinion that before the war entered on its final stage Jefferson Davis should have concentrated all his forces for a larger invasion of the North than was ever in fact undertaken.  In the Gettysburg campaign he might have strengthened Lee’s army by 20,000 men if he could have withdrawn them from the forts at Charleston.  Charleston, however, was threatened during 1863 by the sea and land forces of the North, in an expedition which was probably itself unwise, as Lincoln himself seems to have suspected, but which helped to divert a Confederate army.  In the beginning of 1864 Davis still kept this force at Charleston; he persisted also in keeping a hold on his own State, Mississippi, with a further small army; while Longstreet still remained in the south-east corner of Tennessee, where a useful employment of his force was contemplated but none was made.  The chief Southern armies with which we have to deal are that of Lee, lying south of the Rapidan, and that of Bragg, now superseded by Joseph Johnston, at Dalton, south of Chattanooga.  The Confederacy, it is thought, was now in a position in which it might take long to reduce it, but the only military chance for it was concentration on one great counter-stroke.  This seems to have been the opinion of Lee and Longstreet.  Jefferson Davis clung, even late in the year 1864, to the belief that disaster must somehow overtake any invading Northern army which pushed far.  Possibly he reckoned also that the North would weary of the repeated checks in the process of conquest.  Indeed, as will be seen later, the North came near to doing so, while a serious invasion of the North, unless overwhelmingly successful, might really have revived its spirit.  In any case Jefferson Davis, unlike Lincoln, had no desire to be guided by his best officers.  He was for ever quarrelling with Joseph Johnston and often with Beauregard; the less capable Bragg, though removed from the West, was now installed as his chief adviser in Richmond; and the genius of Lee was not encouraged to apply itself to the larger strategy of the war.

At the beginning of 1864 an advance from Chattanooga southward into the heart of the Confederate country was in contemplation.  Grant and Farragut wished that it should be supported by a joint military and naval attack upon Mobile, in Alabama, on the Gulf of Mexico.  Other considerations on the part of the Government prevented this.  In 1863 Marshal Bazaine had invaded Mexico to set up Louis Napoleon’s ill-fated client the Archduke Maximilian as Emperor.  As the so-called “Monroe Doctrine” (really attributable to the teaching of Hamilton and the action of John Quincy Adams, who was Secretary of State under President Monroe) declared, such an extension of European influence, more especially dynastic influence, on the American continent was highly unacceptable to the United States.  Many in the North were much excited, so much so that during 1864 a preposterous