There was also the fact that Grant's great campaign from which so much had been expected seemed to a large part of the people to have been a failure. Grant had not crushed Lee, but on the contrary, Lee was so strong that he had pushed a column under Early up to the very gates of Washington. At the end of August Sherman had not yet succeeded in taking Atlanta, but had suffered some severe reverses in his effort to accomplish that object. At that time also, critical discontent at the North was encouraged by the spectacle of Sheridan standing on the defensive in the Valley of Virginia against a force scarcely more than one fourth as great as his own. There was despair in many minds, and weariness in many more. The resources of the country had been strained well nigh to the point of breaking. Taxes of every kind had been multiplied almost to the limit of ingenuity. The credit of the country was so far impaired that its paper currency had become depreciated to less than one half its nominal value. The debt of the nation had been swelled to thousands of millions, while its productive capacity was being more and more impaired by the withdrawal of young men by hundreds of thousands from their farms and their workshops. The country had given to Mr. Lincoln soldiers by millions, and dollars by billions, and yet the war went on with no apparent prospect of being early brought to a successful end. For to people uninstructed in military affairs, there was little in the situation in the field at the end of August, 1864, to encourage the hope of a speedy ending of the struggle. The people generally did not realize the great gain that had been made by Grant's insistent pounding of the Confederates, nor did they understand how surely his policy was weakening and destroying the capacity of resistance on the part of the South. Under these circumstances, there was widespread discontent with the administration and disgust over its seeming failure to accomplish the purpose aimed at in the lavish expenditure of money, and the enormous sacrifice of human life. A feeling of despair had come over a very great part of the Northern people, and to this feeling the Democratic party in its platform made a strongly persuasive appeal.