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discerned a greater willingness in Richmond to cabal against her husband. “The temper of Congress is less vicious,” she wrote, “but more concerted in its hostile action.”44 The Confederate Congress had reacted angrily as a body to Davis’s proposal to appropriate forty thousand slaves as a supplement to the army. They would be diggers, cooks, and porters rather than soldiers, but their contribution would be significant enough to earn them their freedom after the war. The War Department clerk John Jones took Davis’s proposal as a sign that normal life in the Confederacy was disintegrating.45 Wood was $100 a cord and coal cost $90 a load, both beyond the means of a civil servant. When Confederate soldiers received their pay, which was not often, they encountered the same frustrating experiences as Jones. Captain Francis Dawson’s monthly salary of $150 allowed him to purchase new trousers for $100, but not a new pair of boots, which cost $350. Dawson prayed that his current boots would see him through the final weeks of the autumn campaign. “After the 15th November, Richmond is safe,” he informed his mother, for then the weather would be the Confederacy’s best defense.

The Army of Northern Virginia was stretched like an elastic band along mile after mile of trenches and fortifications. Lee had already moved his headquarters to be closer to Petersburg, where Grant had made the greatest gains in territory. Dawson’s prophecy was accurate almost to the day. The Federals settled into their winter dugouts during the second week of November. Private James Horrocks and the 5th Battery, New Jersey actually built little wooden cabins, complete with windows and brick chimneys.

Thank goodness I have a nice, warm log shanty to live in [he wrote to his parents]. Already the winter of Virginia begins to commence. This season is characterized chiefly by perpetual rain, and penetrating cold that pierces through one’s clothing and makes one shiver. Mud of a sticky character takes one up to the knees and it is no rare occurrence to get up to the middle in it.… The state of the ground renders the movement of Artillery almost impossible.46

General Longstreet occasionally ordered a round of artillery fire to keep the Federals on their toes, but his batteries were no less mudbound than those of his opponents. The relative quiet enabled him to reorganize his staff. There were several promotions and requests for transfers, including one by Francis Dawson. Longstreet had never shown the least interest in the Englishman, but he was suddenly indignant when Dawson was appointed chief ordnance officer on General Fitzhugh Lee’s staff. “General Fitz Lee heard of me through some of our mutual English friends and made application for me,” Dawson explained to his mother. Dawson was delighted to be able to say goodbye to his uncongenial messmates. “Although I have suffered but little,” he wrote to his mother on November 24, “it is useless to deny that there is considerable jealousy displayed towards an Englishman.”47

Dawson felt welcomed by his new mess officers from the beginning. “A better set of fellows on Fitz Lee’s staff it would have been difficult to find,” he wrote. “There was no bickering, no jealousy, no antagonism.” The camaraderie he had craved—“we lived together as though we were near relatives”—made up for the hardship of his new post. Dawson had to work twice as hard with a smaller staff and no logistical support: “I found that it was no joke to organize the Ordnance Department of a couple of Divisions of Confederate Cavalry, but I adapted myself to circumstances.”48

Lee had sent his nephew to reinforce Jubal Early’s shattered army in the Shenandoah Valley, where there was clearly going to be no winter lull. General Sheridan’s reputation so terrified civilians that the women of Harrisonburg had petitioned the government for the right to organize themselves into a regiment for local defense.49 Their bravery inspired Dawson to chide his mother for complaining about his father’s debts: “Tell him for me to keep a stout breast,” he wrote. “Only