In his speeches Mr. Davis denounced Governor Brown, of Georgia, and General Johnston in unmeasured terms, even insinuating that their loyalty to the Southern cause was doubtful.  So far as General Johnston is concerned, I think Davis did him a great injustice in this particular.  I had know the general before the war and strongly believed it would be impossible for him to accept a high commission for the purpose of betraying the cause he had espoused.  There, as I have said, I think that his policy was the best one that could have been pursued by the whole South—­protract the war, which was all that was necessary to enable them to gain recognition in the end.  The North was already growing weary, as the South evidently was also, but with this difference.  In the North the people governed, and could stop hostilities whenever they chose to stop supplies.  The South was a military camp, controlled absolutely by the government with soldiers to back it, and the war could have been protracted, no matter to what extent the discontent reached, up to the point of open mutiny of the soldiers themselves.  Mr. Davis’s speeches were frank appeals to the people of Georgia and that portion of the South to come to their relief.  He tried to assure his frightened hearers that the Yankees were rapidly digging their own graves; that measures were already being taken to cut them off from supplies from the North; and that with a force in front, and cut off from the rear, they must soon starve in the midst of a hostile people.  Papers containing reports of these speeches immediately reached the Northern States, and they were republished.  Of course, that caused no alarm so long as telegraphic communication was kept up with Sherman.

When Hood was forced to retreat from Atlanta he moved to the south-west and was followed by a portion of Sherman’s army.  He soon appeared upon the railroad in Sherman’s rear, and with his whole army began destroying the road.  At the same time also the work was begun in Tennessee and Kentucky which Mr. Davis had assured his hearers at Palmetto and Macon would take place.  He ordered Forrest (about the ablest cavalry general in the South) north for this purpose; and Forrest and Wheeler carried out their orders with more or less destruction, occasionally picking up a garrison.  Forrest indeed performed the very remarkable feat of capturing, with cavalry, two gunboats and a number of transports, something the accomplishment of which is very hard to account for.  Hood’s army had been weakened by Governor Brown’s withdrawing the Georgia State troops for the purpose of gathering in the season’s crops for the use of the people and for the use of the army.  This not only depleted Hood’s forces but it served a most excellent purpose in gathering in supplies of food and forage for the use of our army in its subsequent march.  Sherman was obliged to push on with his force and go himself with portions of it hither and thither, until it was clearly demonstrated