Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/600

last by its patriotic people because they loved the government itself and respected their noble leaders. But while all the functions of the great civil government were in complete operation as to its own people wherever the army of invasion had not obtained possession of the territory, yet there was a total deficiency of resources to withstand the military forces pressing from without against the life of the new Republic. Still it was considered wise as well as brave to continue in the struggle. Surrender immediately after the Hampton Roads conference an unconditional surrender such as Mr. Lincoln flatly proposed with reliance upon only such liberal treatment as the radical Congress would allow would have been forever questionable. Its consequences no one can declare. Such a surrender in March, 1865, would have been the submission of one to three in numbers ready for battle, and at least one to ten in the general sinews of war, a disproportion ordinarily warranting capitulation, but that preponderance was not regarded as such a reason for unconditional surrender as could be accepted by the people of the South or the intelligent people of other nations. There were many able men who foresaw the approaching disaster, and who regarded the defeat of the Confederacy as inevitable, but their prevision was founded on theory. Their reasoning was indeed logical, and their predictions were literally fulfilled, but it was necessary to show not by theory, not by argument, but by a fact which all the people South and North would clearly understand, that the South was beaten beyond remedy by the overwhelming superiority of its opponents. Appomattox and Bentonville made this demonstration. Ten thousand men whose commissariat had been collapsed twenty-four hours leaving them without rations, but who moved in line of battle on the morning of April 9th to beat out of their way one hundred thousand other men, each of which mighty host was well-fed, well-armed, well-rested and all buoyant with the victories of the past