sturdy yeomen of the country a real comradeship, tempered with respect, which was not to be seen, because it did not exist in the North. Between the two classes there was, as there always must be in any community when differences are not arbitrary, but real, no feeling between the respective ranks in the community but one of mutual liking and respect. To the men of a class which had been from time out of mind justly regarded in peace as their superiors, the rank and file of the South naturally looked up for direction and followed loyally in war. Can any one, in reflecting on this political and social condition of the South of that time, fail to see that, for purposes of war, it offered a great advantage over the political and social condition of the North? In the North there was no leadership of a class; even the class of gentlemen was not known outside of its own bounds; a multitude of great little men were ever momentarily rising like bubbles to the surface, only to disappear; mere wealth played a part in public affairs which would have been impossible in the South.

The moral and physical advantages in the conflict were for a while in favor of the South. The existence of the condition of slavery, save as the mediate cause of dissension between the two parts of the country, had, as already intimated, little to do with the conflict. Some of the foremost men of the South had, from the beginning of the Government, declared against the injustice of slavery. The possibility of its territorial extension, that was all, had come to an end, whether the South should succeed or fail. Men's views of things are independent of what is founded in eternal justice uncomplicated with human difficulties. We have to consider the point of view. We have to consider the obscuration by self-interest. In the question asked by Festus of St. Paul, "What is truth?" is touched and summed up the everlasting possibilities of difference in

the opinions and sentiments of men even as to those things which they have most deeply pondered. Both North and South fought in support of their beliefs; both suffered for them; each ardently prayed that the righteous cause (its own) might prevail. Thus, so far as the abstract question of right was concerned, the two sides were on an equal footing for all acquirement of the strength that the sense of justice can convey. With regard, however, to the possession of strength on lower moral planes than the highest, it may be with reason claimed that the South had at first an advantage over the North. Growing directly out of the political and social organization of the South, came, at the very initiation of the war, a singular advantage to the Confederacy. It put the direction of affairs at once into the hands of a trained military oligarchy. Mr. Davis had had experience in military affairs, and besides having been Secretary of War of the United States, had always been associated with military men. It would not be to the purpose to call attention, in contradiction of the inference from this, to the fact that Mr. Davis had very serious limitations to his usefulness. The advantage of the South in having possessed him grows out of the implied contrast between him and Mr. Lincoln as occupants of opposing presidential chairs, in presence of the sudden flaming out of war. Fine as Mr. Lincoln's touch was as to political men and affairs, the absence of it in military affairs was keenly felt at first. It is almost impossible to conceive that any one could have thought it judicious to let General Scott remain as long as he did, with his infirmities, at the head of military affairs in one of the greatest crises of the world's history. Mr. Lincoln must, however, be largely exonerated from blame for having retained McClellan so long as he did, for the American people were in that under a delusion which resembled a hypnotic condition. We can, however, plead in

excuse for these mistakes, that time was needed within which to distinguish and to select from the mass the best leaders, but to nothing save defect of military capacity can be ascribed some of Mr. Lincoln's essays in suggesting, modifying, or controlling certain operations of the war.

In many most unfortunate respects the position of Washington and the character of its population bore heavily for the Southern and against the Northern cause. Washington was, in affiliation, much more a Southern than a Northern city, and, in consequence, the enemy was, through one means or another, from the beginning to the end of the war, possessed of much better information as to the movements in that capital than was the North of what was done or contemplated in Richmond. The presence, too, of Washington on the very borderland of war has been frequently mentioned as a serious disadvantage in the prosecution of the war, and it was. The United States, as an established government, could not afford, as was said at the time, to swap queens with the enemy. But besides that, there was in the topographical relation of Washington to Richmond another serious embarrassment, which seems to have escaped mention. From Washington to the Blue Ridge it is only half as far as it is from Richmond to the Blue Ridge, so that when the enemy, in his numerous raids, marched down the Shenandoah Valley to demonstrate on or cross the fords of the Potomac, he approached nearer and nearer, as he marched north, to the chief towns of Maryland and Pennsylvania and to the capital at Washington, masked in his movements and protected by a mountain range during the whole time of this approach. Thus the enemy could, as he more than once did, appear suddenly in a new field of operations close to the capital, and profoundly influence, not only there but elsewhere, the current of military events. Add to these advantages possessed by the Confederates in

Virginia the additional one, that the moment the Army of the Potomac advanced toward Richmond it found itself penetrating a hostile country where every scrap of information to the enemy's advantage reached him, and every scrap that might benefit the invading army was concealed. Add to this, again, the fact that the scouts of the enemy, having a greater knowledge of the country than that possessed by those of their adversary, were able to make their way through hostile lines in a manner truly marvellous on occasions.

The

It would appear at the first blush, as is proved by the fact that persons who have not examined minutely into the matter believe it without hesitation, that the South was, from beginning to end of the war, morally and physically, in everything, greatly overmatched. That it was, in the long run, overmatched, is undeniable, as the event proves. question raised here, however, is as to the degree to which it was overmatched, and as to the degree there is a very general misapprehension. Territorially the United States was represented by twenty-two States, as arrayed against eleven States of the Southern Confederacy. Twenty-two million freemen and half a million slaves apparently adhered to the Northern cause, as against five and a half million freemen and three and a half million slaves apparently adhering to the Southern cause. But, on the other hand, it should be remembered that, in addition to the signal advantages which have been recited in favor of the South, the sentiment of the Union was numerically insignificant there after secession was once fairly entered upon, as compared with the sentiment in the North which opposed the prosecution of the war, and numerically increased as the war went on. And, additionally, it should be remembered that the slaves of the South were able to perform the tillage of the ground, and thereby release every able-bodied white

man for military service; whereas, for the tillage of the soil of the North there was no such class of laborers working from the earliest to the latest age, and its multifarious industries required the presence of skilled labor, while at the same time there was nothing in the South to correspond with such industrial occupations. The greatest disadvantage under which the South labored was that its ports were blockaded, and that it had scarcely the semblance of a navy. This meant that it was largely cut off from the importation of munitions of war and other things, and that the blockade could not be raised except by the intervention of foreign powers. Its inconsiderable wealth, too, as compared with that of the North, and the almost boundless credit of the latter, was a source of relative weakness to the South.

If the reader will carefully scan all these various elements with relation to each other, and will strike the balance, he will see that, although the North preponderated in strength over the South, yet that the difference between them was not so great as is frequently imagined. He will see that the South had just as much faith in the justice of its cause as the North had in the justice of its cause, and, therefore, that so far as moral force is derived from the contemplation of doing right, the contestants were equal. But he will also see that, at the beginning, there were certain minor moral advantages possessed in larger degree by the South than by the North. It is only by recognizing the fact, that any one can account for its desperate prolongation of the struggle. What the dynamic value of these minor elements of strength may have amounted to, no man can say. The statement sometimes made that the moral is to the physical as five to two is an absurdity, the two things being incommensurable. All these questions will be of especial interest to the future historian who, in his calm analysis of events, will test them in the crucible of world-experience with solvents of a vast