failure of the cotton supply.



Chapter IV. The Reaction Against Richmond

A popular revulsion of feeling preceded and followed the great
period of Confederate history--these six months of Titanic effort
which embraced between March and September, 1862, splendid
success along with catastrophes. But there was a marked
difference between the two tides of popular emotion. The wave of
alarm which swept over the South after the surrender of Fort
Donelson was quickly translated into such a high passion for
battle that the march of events until the day of Antietam
resounded like an epic. The failure of the triple offensive which
closed this period was followed in very many minds by the
appearance of a new temper, often as valiant as the old but far
more grim and deeply seamed with distrust. And how is this
distrust, of which the Confederate Administration was the object,
to be accounted for?

Various answers to this question were made at the time. The laws
of the spring of 1862 were attacked as unconstitutional. Davis
was held responsible for them and also for the slow equipment of
the army. Because the Confederate Congress conducted much of its
business in secret session, the President was charged with a love
of mystery and an unwillingness to take the people into his
confidence. Arrests under the law suspending the writ of habeas
corpus were made the texts for harangues on liberty. The right of
freedom of speech was dragged in when General Van Dorn, in the