The miles and miles of hospital barracks in Washington, crowded to their doors with wounded, dying men, were the living witnesses of the Nation's mortal agony. Every city, town, village, hamlet and county in the North was in mourning. Death had literally flung its pall over the world. From these thousands of stricken homes there had slowly risen a storm of protest against the new leader of the Army. The word "Butcher" was on every lip. General Grant, they said, possessed merely the qualities of the bulldog fighter--tenacity and persistence. He held what he had won so long as men were poured into his ranks by tens of thousands to take the place of the dead. They declared that he possessed no genius, no strategic skill, no power to originate plans and devise means to overcome his skillful and brilliant antagonist. The demand was pressed on the President for his removal. His refusal had brought on him the blame for all the blood and all the suffering and all the failures of the past bitter year. His answer to his critics was remorseless in its common sense, but added nothing to his hold on the people. "We must fight to win," he firmly declared. "Grant is the ablest general we have yet developed. His losses have been appalling--but the struggle is now to the bitter end. Our resources are exhaustless. The South can not replace her fallen soldiers--her losses are fatal, ours are not." In the face of a political campaign he prepared a call by draft for five hundred thousand more men and issued a proclamation appointing a day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer. The spirits of the people touched the lowest tide ebb of despair. The war debt had reached the appalling total of two thousand millions of dollars and its daily cost was four millions. The paper of the Treasury was rapidly depreciating and the premium on gold rising until the value of a one dollar green-back note was less than fifty cents in real money. The bankers, fearing the total bankruptcy of the Nation, had begun to refuse further loans on bonds at any rate of interest. The bounty offered to men for reenlistment in the army when their terms expired amounted to the unheard of sum of one thousand five hundred dollars cash on signing for the new term. Bounty jumping had become the favorite sport of adventurous scoundrels. Millions of dollars were being stolen by these men without the addition of a musket to the fighting force. Grant was hanging them daily, but the traitor's work continued. The enlisted man deserted in three weeks and reappeared at the next post and reenlisted again, collecting his bounty with each enrollment.