and fade away.  Then, too, desertions were taking place, not only among those who were with General Lee in the neighborhood of their capital, but throughout the whole Confederacy.  I remember that in a conversation with me on one occasion long prior to this, General Butler remarked that the Confederates would find great difficulty in getting more men for their army; possibly adding, though I am not certain as to this, “unless they should arm the slave.”

The South, as we all knew, were conscripting every able-bodied man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five; and now they had passed a law for the further conscription of boys from fourteen to eighteen, calling them the junior reserves, and men from forty-five to sixty to be called the senior reserves.  The latter were to hold the necessary points not in immediate danger, and especially those in the rear.  General Butler, in alluding to this conscription, remarked that they were thus “robbing both the cradle and the grave,” an expression which I afterwards used in writing a letter to Mr. Washburn.

It was my belief that while the enemy could get no more recruits they were losing at least a regiment a day, taking it throughout the entire army, by desertions alone.  Then by casualties of war, sickness, and other natural causes, their losses were much heavier.  It was a mere question of arithmetic to calculate how long they could hold out while that rate of depletion was going on.  Of course long before their army would be thus reduced to nothing the army which we had in the field would have been able to capture theirs.  Then too I knew from the great number of desertions, that the men who had fought so bravely, so gallantly and so long for the cause which they believed in—­and as earnestly, I take it, as our men believed in the cause for which they were fighting—­had lost hope and become despondent.  Many of them were making application to be sent North where they might get employment until the war was over, when they could return to their Southern homes.

For these and other reasons I was naturally very impatient for the time to come when I could commence the spring campaign, which I thoroughly believed would close the war.

There were two considerations I had to observe, however, and which detained me.  One was the fact that the winter had been one of heavy rains, and the roads were impassable for artillery and teams.  It was necessary to wait until they had dried sufficiently to enable us to move the wagon trains and artillery necessary to the efficiency of an army operating in the enemy’s country.  The other consideration was that General Sheridan with the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac was operating on the north side of the James River, having come down from the Shenandoah.  It was necessary that I should have his cavalry with me, and I was therefore obliged to wait until he could join me south of the James River.

Let us now take account of what he was doing.