Events draw near, at the memory of which you sigh--or even groan
perhaps--to-day, when three years have passed.
For this page is written on the morning of April 8, 1868.
This day, three years ago, Lee was staggering on in sight of
Appomattox.
X.
AEGRI SOMNIA.--MARCH, 1865.
These letters and figures arouse terrible memories--do they not,
reader? You shudder as you return in thought to that epoch, provided
always that you then wore the gray, and not the blue. If you wore the
blue, you perhaps laugh.
The South had reached, in this month of March, one of those periods
when the most hopeful can see, through the black darkness, no single
ray of light. Throughout the winter, the government had made unceasing
efforts to bring out the resources of the country--efforts honest and
untiring, if not always judicious--but as the days, and weeks, and
months wore on, it became more and more evident that the hours of the
Confederacy were numbered. The project of employing negro troops, which
Congress long opposed, had been adopted at last, but only in time to be
too late. The peace commissioners had held their interview with
Lincoln, but effected nothing. The enemy continually advanced toward
the achievement of their end. Sherman had safely made his famous "march
to the sea"--Savannah and Charleston had fallen--the western army was
about to unite with the army of Grant at Petersburg.
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