But Jefferson Davis was also in earnest. He had never shared southern hopes for the election of McClellan and a negotiated peace. “We are fighting for existence; and by fighting alone can independence be gained,” Davis had told audiences during a morale-building tour of the lower South after the fall of Atlanta. The Confederacy remained “as erect and defiant as ever,” he informed Congress in November. “Nothing has changed in the purpose of its Government, in the indomitable valor of its troops, or in the unquenchable spirit of its people.”71 It was to quench this spirit that Sherman set forth
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