At the end of 1864, the Confederacy was scotched if not quite killed.
Sherman had halved it by striking into Savannah. East Tennessee and
southwest Virginia were cut by Stoneman. Alabama and Mississippi were
traversed by Grierson and Wilson. In sum, the new map resembled that of
a territory charted off into sections.
President Lincoln said that its face put him in mind of a weary
traveler in the West, who came at night to a small log cabin. The
homesteader and his wife said they would put him up, but had not a bite
of victuals to offer him. He accepted the truss of litter and was soon
asleep. But he was awakened by whispers letting out that in the fire
ashes a hoe-cake was baking. The woman and her mate were merry over how
they had defrauded the stranger of the food. Feeling mad at having been
sent to bed supperless--uncommon mean in that part--he pretended to
wake up and came forth to sit at the dying fire. He pretended, too,
that he was ill from worry.
"The fact is, my father, when he died, left me a large farm. But I had
no sooner taken possession of it than mortgages began to appear. My
farm was situated like this----" He took up the loggerhead poker to
illustrate, drawing lines in the ashes so as to enclose the ash-cake.
"First one man got so much of it one side," he cut off a side of the
hidden dough. "Then another brought in a mortgage and took off another
piece there. Then another here, and another there! and here and
there"--drawing the poker through the ashes to make the figure
plain--"until," he said, "there was nothing of the farm left for
anybody--which, I presume is the case with your cake!"
"And, I reckon," concluded Mr. Lincoln, "that the prospect is now very
good of the South being as cut up as the ash-cake!"--(Telegraph Manager
A. Chandler.)
* * * * *
"I COUNT FOR SOMETHING!"
The true lovers of the South were sorely wrung in 1864 by the Emperor
Napoleon taking advantage of the "lockup" of the United States, to set
a puppet in the Austrian Archduke Maximilian on the imperial throne--so
called--of Mexico. It was said that the Cabinet of Lincoln were divided
on the subject; whereon the Marquis of Chambrun, having the ear of the
Executive, called on him, and inquired on the real state--would the
United States intervene, if only by winking at a filibustering
expedition from the South, with Northern volunteers accessory, to
assist the natives against the usurper?
"There has been war enough," was his rejoinder, with that sadness which
Secretary Boutwell declares inseparable from him, but not due to the
depression of public affairs. "I know what the American people want;
but, thank God! I count for something, and during my second term there
will be no more fighting!"
It was left for his successor, with the two armies disbanded, but still
whetted for slaughter, to expel the French by the mere threat of their
union to restore the republic.
* * * * *