ing to abandon Atlanta without a
battle and the President promptly removed him from command and appointed
Hood in his place.

When Hood assumed command of the disgruntled army, it was too late to
save Atlanta. Had Johnston delivered battle with his full force at
Dalton, Sherman might have been crushed as Rosecrans was overwhelmed at
Chickamauga.

Hood's army was driven back into their trenches. Sherman threw his hosts
under cover of night on a wide flanking movement and Atlanta fell.

Under the mighty impulse of this news Lincoln was reelected, the peace
party of the North defeated and the doom of the Confederacy sealed.

CHAPTER XLI

THE FALL OF RICHMOND

The conspirators who had complained most bitterly of Davis for the
appointment of Lee to the command of the army before Richmond when
McClellan was thundering at its gates, now succeeded in passing through
the Confederate Congress a bill to create a military dictatorship which
they offered to the man for whose promotion they had condemned the
President.

Lee treated this attempt to strike the Confederate Chieftain over his
head with the contempt it deserved. Davis laughed at his enemies by the
most complete acceptance of their plans.

His answer to Senator Barton's committee was explicit.

"I have absolute confidence in General Lee's patriotism and military
genius. I will gladly cooeperate with Congress in any plan to place him
in supreme command."

Lee refused to accept the responsibility except with the advice and
direction of the President, and the conspiracy ended in a fiasco.

From the moment Sherman's army pierced the heart of the South the
Confederate President saw with clear vision that the cause of Southern
independence was lost. Lee's army must slowly starve. His one supreme
purpose now was to fight to the last ditch for better terms than
unconditional surrender which would mean the loss of billions in
property and the possible enfranchisement of a million slaves.

That Lincoln was intensely anxious to stop the shedding of blood he knew
from more than one authentic source. It was rumored that the Northern
President was willing to consider compensation for the slaves. An army
of a hundred thousand determined Southern soldiers led by an indomitable
general could fight indefinitely. That it was of the utmost importance
to the life of the South to secure a surrender which would forbid the
enfranchisement of the slaves and the degradation o