The Southern Literary Messenger, the brightest literary light of the South, continued publishing nearly to the end of the Civil War. Here in the February 1864 issue we find the editor ruminating on the pessimism of Confederate citizens and the many reasons to be cheerful about the prospects of the war. You may take it as a sign that your war is going badly for you if you find it necessary to enumerate all the reasons why you still might not lose. Perhaps it is also a bad sign that you have no one left who can tell you how to spell “panacea” or “mobilized,” or even “Southerner.”
Whatever may be the cause, the fact is sufficiently patent to be undeniable, that the popular mind, for months past, has laboured under a burden of sore depression. The assertion of a correspondent of an English paper, that the resolution of the South, so energetic in success, and indomitable in actual contest, staggers under the weight of misfortune and reverse, has in the lapse of the past six months received a substantial verification, which their unflinching fortitude and heroic constancy in previous stages of the war, equally attended by calamity and disappointment, had little prepared us to expect.
The leading causes of popular anxiety and apprehension, besides a countless variety of causes of minor weight, mutually co-operative, and perhaps all depending for their remedy upon the happy and successful solution of the more important problems, are the depreciation of the currency, the scarcity of supplies, and the absence of military success. As to the extent to which the first difficulty has been aggravated by the last, and the second by the concomitant action of both the others, it is needless to conjecture.
The great heart of the nation throbs with impatient solicitude as it awaits the application of the wished-for relief, and calculates the probabilities of its restoration to that elastic energy and buoyant hopefulness which, to the Southernor, is everything for contentment in quiet, and enthusiastic exertion in time of trial. With reference to the question of the currency, we will express no opinion, though the apprehension is well-founded, that if astute financial abilities in Congress be necessary, we have more to hope from future military success in the improvement of our finances, than from the fortunate consummation of any expedients of legislation. It is an exceedingly difficult matter for a politician to become so thoroughly imbued with the inspiration of patriotic devotion and self-sacrifice, as to forget entirely the consideration of his chances of re-election.
The question of supplies we believe to be greatly dependent upon the achievement of that military success, which after all, in time of war, is the great nepenthe, the panecea for national affliction, and which in the happy prosecution of the spring campaign will restore to us the country upon which we have been mainly dependent for supplies, and such additional territory as with a proper employment of the opportunity, will definitely put at rest the question of subsistence.
Many persons find it difficult to comprehend the possibility of such military results as are essential to our salvation, in the face of the disasters of last summer. That is as an exceedingly superficial and unintelligent view of the situation, which regards those events as having exercised any seriously adverse influence upon the fortunes of the Confederacy. The taking of a city, the gaining of a battle, the capture of an army, or even the subjection of a province, is but a small advance over the obstacles besetting the path which leads to the attainment of the object of an invasion which contemplates the conquest of half a continent. Napoleon won the battle of Borodino, in the attainment of those ends which are usually regarded as the elements of success in battle, viz: the discomfiture and. retreat of the enemy. He advanced to the heart of the most extensive empire of modern Europe, but in a few weeks retreated with an army almost annihilated and without another general engagement. Grant, who is for the nonce the military idol of Yankeedom, and who is to be the Agamemnon of the next crusade against us, has himself illustrated even in his brief career of martial glory, the impracticability of successful penetration of hostile territory in his memorable retreat from upper Mississippi, when Van Dorn captured his supplies at Holly Springs.
But what is there in the military situation which forbids the confident anticipation of the expulsion of the enemy, in the spring and summer, from the more vital sections of our territory? What have they now that they either did not have or could not have obtained twelve months since? The Mississippi river, and the country about Chattanooga. This answer comprehends the entire result of Yankee labour in the last twelve months. They claim to hold Tennessee. Yet only a few days since we are informed of the exploits of the indomitable Forrest in the very midst of the Federal garrisons, and with a force mainly recruited and organized within three months. Johnston is with the main army of Tennessee, imparting the inspiration and energy of his martial genius—and most bravely the work of re-organization and improvement progresses. Longstreet, with his invincible corps of trained veterans, from the unequalled cohorts of Northern Virginia, holds with an unrelaxed grasp the mountain passes of East Tennessee, ready, with the swoop of an eagle, to dash into Kentucky upon the unprotected flank of Grant, or to fall upon the more exposed situations of Federal power in Tennessee. Lee’s unconquered battalions, often victors than the Old Guard of Austerlitz, or the Tenth Legion of Caesar, are still intact, and present the old front of proud defiance to their ancient foe, whom to meet, with them, has been to conquer.
To offset all these cheering features of the situation, we are told of Yankee perseverance, of Yankee enthusiasm for the prosecution of the war, and of resolutions in the Yankee Congress pledging all their power and resources for its prosecution, and even of Yankee intention to raise a million of men to release their prisoners. As to the latter proposition, we wonder that while in their facetious mood, they did not think of a crusade of old women and bedlamites to march to the moon. The mob of crazy fanatics and conscience-stricken fools, who followed Peter the Hermit to the Holy Land, were nothing compared to such a spectacle as this army of Yankee Humanitarians. We can imagine the derision with which such a scheme will be received in Lee’s army after its experience with Pennsylvania militia last summer. Yankee perseverance we are already familiar with, having pitted Southern endurance and fortitude against it, and successfully withstood its most malignant exertions for nearly three years. To talk of Yankee enthusiasm in favour of the war, is absurd, when we remember the results of the last draft, that bounties, of $1,800 are now vainly offered in New York, and that the commutation feature of the conscription act has been repealed in consequence of the indisposition to enter the service of everybody who could purchase an exemption.
Panic or alarm are equally out of place in either people or legislators. We need not fear Yankee perseverance, or Yankee numbers. Better far than all these are a compact military organization, so disciplined and mobolized as to be thrown upon the enemy at any available point, prudent generalship, wise statesmanship, official integrity, and an inexorable devotion to our national independence.
——From the Southern Literary Messenger, February, 1864.
