slight concessions to the convenience of the farmers. The
President's appeal for a law directly taxing slaves and land had
been ignored by Congress, but another of his suggestions had been
incorporated in the Funding Act. The state of the currency was
now so grave that Davis attributed to it all the evils growing
out of the attempts to enforce impressment. As the value of the
paper dollar had by this time shrunk to six cents in specie and
the volume of Confederate paper was upward of seven hundred
millions, Congress undertook to reduce the volume and raise the
value by compelling holders of notes to exchange them for bonds.
By way of driving the note-holders to consent to the exchange,
provision was made for the speedy taxation of notes for one-third
their face value.

Such were the main items of the government program for 1864.
Armed with this, Davis braced himself for the great task of
making head against the enemies that now surrounded the
Confederacy. It is an axiom of military science that when one
combatant possesses the interior line, the other can offset this
advantage only by exerting coincident pressure all round, thus
preventing him from shifting his forces from one front to
another. On this principle, the Northern strategists had at last
completed their gigantic plan for a general envelopment of the
whole Confederate defense both by land and sea. Grant opened
operations by crossing the Rapidan and telegraphing Sherman to
advance into Georgia.

The stern events of the spring of 1864 form such a famous page in
military history that the sober civil story of those months
appears by comparison lame and impotent. Nevertheless, the