On the 31st Daniels wrote, “Today closes the gloomiest year of our struggle. No sanguine hope of foreign intervention buoys up the spirit of the Confederate public as at the end of 1861. No brilliant victory like that of Fredericksburg encourages us to look forward to a speedy and successful termination of the war, as in the last weeks of 1862.”—Writings, 155. Stephens and Governor Joseph E. Brown were particularly active in creating dissatisfaction throughout Georgia. Rhett and Vance, aided by the Mercury, carried out a like program in the Carolinas. Dodd, 300-301. I thing Dodd is wrong in classing H. V. Johnson as an opponent of the administration, at any rate before the latter part of 1864. See Official Records, Series IV, Vol. III, pp. 278-281, 552, 544-9, 662-3.
