Confederacy powerful armies. Lee had inspired them with victory.
This period of buoyant hope culminated in the great offensive
design which followed Second Manassas. It was known that the
Northern people, or a large part of them, had suffered a
reaction; the tide was setting strong against the Lincoln
Government; in the autumn, the Northern elections would be held.
To influence those elections and at the same time to drive the
Northern armies back into their own section; to draw Maryland and
Kentucky into the Confederate States; to fall upon the invaders
in the Southwest and recover the lower Mississippi--to accomplish
all these results was the confident expectation of the President
and his advisers as they planned their great triple offensive in
August, 1862. Lee was to invade Maryland; Bragg was to invade
Kentucky; Van Dorn was to break the hold of the Federals in the
Southwest. If there is one moment that is to be considered the
climax of Davis's career, the high-water mark of Confederate
hope, it was the moment of joyous expectation when the triple
offensive was launched, when Lee's army, on a brilliant autumn
day, crossed the Potomac, singing "Maryland, my Maryland".



Chapter III. The Fall Of King Cotton

While the Confederate Executive was building up its military
establishment, the Treasury was struggling with the problem of
paying for it. The problem was destined to become insoluble. From
the vantage-point of a later time we can now see that nothing
could have provided a solution short of appropriation and
mobilization of the whole industrial power of the country along