...after the beginning of 1863...[for] the leaders of the Southern nation...It was no longer possible to hope that the war's current might yet be reversed...-Catton, Never Call Retreat, In the Rapids, "The Paralysis of Command," 49.
Stephens, the Confederacy's vice president, wrote at this time that he could not see the war lasting as much as a "twelvemonth" longer. But it did. It lasted two "twelvemonths" and four more months on top of that!