584 NortH Carorina Troops, 1861~’65.

ness, the deadly slaughter, thrice repeated, at Cold Harbor,
and the various battlefields of 1864, bear witness.

But we can see clearly now that all the fortitude, all the
bravery of that deadly year were exerted in a hopeless contest
with overmastering fate. As the long winter wore away to
its close, and the spring campaign of 1864 was about to open,
the Congress of the Confederate States was confronted with
appalling difficulties. Compelled to present to the world an
unshaken front, in secret session the President and the Gen-
eral commanding laid before the Congress unvarnished state-
ments of the army. Money, food, clothing, arms, medicines,
supplies of every kind, and above all, men were imperatively
demanded. The insatiate Moloch of war had made his im-
perative requisitions, and they could not be refused.

In obedience to the demands of the hour, the year 1864 was
ushered in by the enactment of certain stringent measures,
which, if carefully considered, were of themselves sufficient
to indicate the inevitable end. In a hopeless effort to stay
the rapid depreciation of the currency, the Treasury notes
then in circulation were called in for redemption, and a new
currency issued at the rate of two dollars for three.

‘‘Coin was so rare that the treasury quaked
If a dollar should drop in the till.”

The writ of habeas corpus, the type and the bulwark of
Anglo-Saxon freedom, was permitted to be suspended at the
will of the President, and the patriot was forced to the alter-
native of being charged with lukewarmness to the cause of
independence, or of being disloyal to the principles of civil
liberty. The taxation and impressment laws were so amended
and enlarged in their operation, that their enforcement was
equivalent to actual confiscation of all materials and supplies
adapted to the exigencies of the armies in the field.

During the progress of the year, the Secretary of the Treas-
ury reported an error in his estimates, and a consequent defi-
ciency of four hundred millions of dollars, and taxes at the
rate of 5 per cent., which had just been collected, were or-
dered to be paid over again.

But the great necessity that overshadowed all, was the need

THE JuNIoR Reserves BRIGADE. 585

of men. There was no Cadmus to pluck from the mouth of
danger the serpent’s teeth, that sown in fertile Theban Val-
ley should spring up an armed soldiery.

Into the Union armies the nations of the earth were pour-
ing their surplus population, tempted by prodigal bounties,
both State and National. The blockaded and beleaguered
South, impoverished, with her scattered population, always
haunted by a brooding fear of a servile insurrection, could
see upon the dark horizon no ray of light. The ranks of
her armies, already depleted by the losses on the field, were
daily thinned by desertion, and every effort to recall the
laggards seemed in vain. With reluctance unfeigned and
deep, but as the only alternative, on 17 February, 1864, the
Confederate Congress passed the new enrollment act, and
‘robbing alike the cradle and the grave” called into the ser-
vice of the Confederacy every man and boy who was able to
bear arms in her defence. Those who had furnished substi-
tutes were no longer protected by their contract of exemption.
Men between the ages of 45 and 50 were ordered to be en-
listed in the Senior Reserves, and boys between the ages of
17 and 18 were mustered into the military service as Junior
Reserves.

Under the terms of the act, before the service should be
made compulsory by conscription, an opportunity was given
to all to volunteer. It is important to recall the condition of
affairs which then existed. By the spring of 1864 all the
nickel-plating of the war had been rubbed off, and its romance
and poetry had taken flight. In 1861, when resplendent uni-
forms, dashing horses, camps overrunning with every luxury,
seemed the usual adjuncts of war, he only was to be pitied
who was left behind, and volunteering seemed a holiday ex-
cursion. In the three years which had passed, even the most
light-hearted boy had been brought face to face with stern re-
alities. The hill-sides of Virginia were filled with shallow
soldier’s sepulchres, and every household mourned its slain.
The hospitals were crowded with the sick and wounded whom
over-worked surgeons, illy supplied with instruments and
medicines, were unable to relieve. Desertion, like an eating
cancer, was poisoning the blood and sapping the spirit of the