In February, 1864 America’s tragic domestic conflict between the North and South entered its thirty-fourth continuous, and destructive, month. No clear-cut winner was evident, although many Northerners and Southerners alike realized that the North militarily held the upper hand.
Yet, in the North where a presidential election was pending and as nominating conventions grew ever closer, mutterings of discontent over Lincoln’s December 1863 reconstruction plan which would offer liberal terms to the South after the war increased from peace activists and the Radical Republicans in Congress.
Jefferson Davis’ Confederate government increasingly centered its efforts simply at retaining enough strength to continue to defend the Confederate homeland against its invaders from the North. Until spring ensued, allowing for large scale army maneuvering, war weariness firmly grasped the population of both nations.