Meanwhile, events were culminating with terrible rapidity, and their threatening significance electrified the North. The Southern people and their sympathizers everywhere were jubilant over the victory of Chancellorsville, and both demanded and expected that this success should be followed by decisive victories. Lee's army, General Longstreet said, was "in a condition of strength and morale to undertake anything," and Southern public sentiment and the needs of the Richmond government all pointed towards a second and more extended invasion of the North. The army was indeed strong, disciplined, a powerful instrument in the hands of a leader like General Lee. Nevertheless, it had reached about the highest degree of its strength. The merciless conscription in the South had swept into its ranks nearly all the able-bodied men, and food and forage were becoming so scarce in war-wasted Virginia and other regions which would naturally sustain this force, that a bold, decisive policy had become a necessity. It was believed that on Northern soil the army could be fed, and terms of peace dictated. The chief motive for this step was the hope of a counter-revolution in the North where the peace faction had grown bold and aggressive to a degree that only stopped short of open resistance. The draft or general conscription which the President had ordered to take place in July awakened intense hostility to the war and the government on the part of a large and rapidly increasing class of citizens. This class had its influential and outspoken leaders, who were evidently in league with a secret and disloyal organization known as the "Knights of the Golden Circle," the present object of which was the destruction of the Union and the perpetuation of slavery. In the city of New York the spirit of rebellion was as rampant in the breasts of tens of thousands as in Richmond, and Mr. Vosburgh knew it. His great sagacity and the means of information at his command enabled him to penetrate much of the intrigue that was taking place, and to guess at far more. He became haggard and almost sleepless from his labors and anxieties, for he knew that the loyal people of the North were living over a volcano. Marian shared in this solicitude, and was his chief confidante. He wished her, with her mother, to go to some safe and secluded place in the country, and offered to lease again the cottage which they had occupied the previous summer, but Marian said that she would not leave him, and that he must not ask her to do so. Mrs. Vosburgh was eventually induced to visit relatives in New England, and then father and daughter watched events with a hundred-fold more anxiety than that of the majority, because they were better informed and more deeply involved in the issues at stake than many others. But beyond all thought of worldly interests, their intense loyal feeling burned with a pure, unwavering flame.