Besides guarding secrets, the Southern press did much to develop and preserve a high morale among the people and the soldiers. In reporting the many indecisive engagements near Richmond, the editors of the South would always claim victory while the Northern papers were exaggerating Union disasters or complaining that the successes achieved by Federal arms were not more conclusive. To use a familiar athletic term, the men in the field were well supported "on the side lines". With admirable cleverness the best interpretation was put upon Southern reverses. When the earlier promises of moving on to Washington and New York failed to materialize, the papers began to preach the theory that the whole purpose was the defense of the Southern capital. Thus Gettysburg and Antietam were heralded as defensive victories. Always the superior fighting power of Confederates over Unionists was assumed in the newspaper comments, and that fighting spirit which goes with an air of invincibleness was engendered.[1]
In spite, however, of all this caution there were occasional breaches of discretion on the part of Southern papers. The "rebel war clerk" Jones declared that the enemy "seemed to have speedy and accurate information from Richmond not only of all movements of our army, but of the intentions of the government. … They know every disposition of our forces from day to day sooner than our own people!"[2] The publication of his army's movements at times frustrated Lee's plans, as for instance when the papers heralded the sending of Longstreet to the Western army, which was intended to be a secret.[3] Beauregard, who suffered at various times from reporters, complained in 1861 that the real extent of his numerical strength as well as his intended operations were revealed by newspapers and requested the Secretary of War to exclude reporters from the vicinity of his army.[4]
In the last desperate months of Southern resistance, some interesting disclosures came from a quite unexpected source. President Jefferson Davis, after the fall of Atlanta, visited Georgia to stem the tide of opposition led by Governor Brown. In speaking at Macon he explained that reinforcements were not sent to Georgia from
- ↑ Grant on Wilderness Campaign, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, IV. 149.
- ↑ Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, March 1, 1865.
- ↑ R. E, Lee, jr., Recollections and Letters of General Lee (New York, 1905), p. 416.
- ↑ Offic. Rec., first series, vol. LI., pt. 2, p. 152.
mond Enquirer, June 19, 1862; Rhodes, History of the United States, IV. 36; G. F. R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, II. 4, and I. xiv, 314, 413, 415; T. N. Page, Robert E. Lee, pp. 136 ff., esp. p. 157.
