That a considerable number of persons should be informed of the essential points of the proposed campaign could not be avoided, and, of course, each person admitted to the secret diminished the chances of it being kept ; for, even were traitors less plenty than they usually are, the fact that we were arranging our plans and making our preparations in the midst of enemies, or of half-hearted friends, rendered it scarcely within the range of possibility that some unlucky word or indiscreet expression would not ,give some one a hint of what was going on, and enable preparations to meet the attack to be made.
Besides all this, two great difficulties in the way of success existed. There was no thoroughness of organization, it was impossible, under the circumstances, that there should have been, and there was no recognized leader whose authority was admitted by all, and who had the direction of all the movements.
The "Copperheads."
The blow, therefore, was to be, to a very great extent, a random one, struck in the dark, and with no assurances what ever that the results expected from it would follow. We were utterly unable to tell how much we could count on in the way of active assistance from the Southern sympathizers, or "Copperheads," as they were called. For my own part, I did not rely greatly upon anything they could or would do, and am now very well satisfied that it was a piece of supreme folly to have expected anything from them.
These people were really traitors both to the South and the North, and in the long run they did the cause of the Confederacy far more harm than they did it good. They professed to believe that the South was right, and yet they were not willing to take up arms for her, or, with very few exceptions, to do anything practical for her that would render themselves liable to get into the least trouble with the Federal government. They annoyed the government by their captious criticisms of all its actions, by opposing the prosecution of the war in every way that they could with safety to themselves, and by loud expressions of Southern sympathy. All they accomplished, however, was a prolongation of the war, and the disfranchisement of nearly the entire white population of the South after the war was ended; for
