Alfriend's censure of Congress does not fall far wide of the mark. “Mr. Davis,” he says, “never could consolidate the resources of the South as he desired, being constantly hampered by demagogism in Congress, which could at all times be coerced by the press hostile to the Administration, or influenced by the slightest display of popular displeasure. Pretending to place the whole means of the country at the disposal of the President, Congress yet invariably rendered its measures inoperative by emasculating clauses providing exemptions and immunities of every description.” Alfriend, 576. A later biographer asserts that the opposition outside of Congress, created by Stephens, Rhett, Brown [Yancey and Vance] was “a most important, if not the greatest, cause of the final collapse of the Confederacy.” Dodd, 268. Of the two, the opposition mentioned by Dodd was unquestionably the more injurious to the Southern cause, but Congress also played its responsible part. The truth of the saying was confirmed—“A house divided against itself can not stand.”
