representatives whose constituents had not returned them to the
Second Congress.

What was Davis doing while the ground was thus being cut from
under his feet? For one thing he gave his endorsement to the
formation of "Confederate Societies" whose members bound
themselves to take Confederate money as legal tender. He wrote a
letter to one such society in Mississippi, praising it for
attempting "by common consent to bring down the prices of all
articles to the standard of the soldiers' wages" and adding that
the passion of speculation had "seduced citizens of all classes
from a determined prosecution of the war to an effort to amass
money." The Sentinel advocated the establishment of a law fixing
maximum prices. The discussion of this proposal seems to make
plain the raison d'etre for the existence of the Sentinel. Even
such stanch government organs as the Enquirer and the Courier
shied at the idea, but the Mercury denounced it vigorously,
giving long extracts from Thiers, and discussed the mistakes, of
the French Revolution with its "law of maximum."

Davis, however, did not take an active part in the political
campaign, nor did the other members of the Government. It was not
because of any notion that the President should not leave the
capital that Davis did not visit the disaffected regions of North
Carolina when the startled populace winced under its first
experience with taxation. Three times during his Administration
Davis left Richmond on extended journeys: late in 1862, when
Vicksburg had become a chief concern of the Government, he went
as far afield as Mississippi in order to get entirely in touch
with the military situation in those parts; in the month of