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never aspire to martial prowess, and were unequal to great deeds of arms. But if these orators had considered the lessons of history they would have found that commercial communities were among the most pugnacious and ambitious and obstinate of belligerents, and might have traced the discovery through the annals of Carthage, Venice, Genoa, Holland, and England.

Another idea was that the victory of the South was to be insured and expedited by the recognition of the new Government by the European Powers. "Cotton," said the Charleston Mercury, "would bring England to her knees." The idea was ludicrous enough that England and France would instinctively or readily fling themselves into a convulsion, which their great politicians saw was the most tremendous one of modern times. But the puerile argument, which even President Davis did not hesitate to adopt, about the power of King Cotton," amounted to this absurdity: that the great and illustrious power of England would submit to the ineffable humiliation of acknowledging its dependency on the infant Confederacy of the South, and the subserviency of its empire, its political interests and its pride, to a single article of trade that was grown in America!

These silly notions of an early accomplishment of their independence were, more than anything else, to blind and embarrass the Confederate States in the great work before them. Their ports were to remain open for months before the blockade, declared by Mr. Lincoln, could be made effective; and yet nothing was to be imported through them but a few thousand stand of small arms, when, in that time, and through those avenues, there might have been brought from Europe all the needed munitions of war. Immense contracts were to be offered the Government, only to be rejected and laughed at.Golden opportunities were to be thrown away, while the Confederate authorities still persuaded themselves that the war was to be despatched by mere make-shifts of money, and a sudden rush of volunteers to arms.

It is a curious speculation how to explain that two belligerents, like the North and South, could have shown such blindness and littleness of mind in entering upon the mighty and tremendous contest which was to ensue, and which had, in fact, become obvious and inevitable. But it is said that the Governments and leaders of each party only shared the general popular opinion on each side, as to the rapid decision of the war. This excuse is imperfect. Those who are put in authority and in the high places of government are supposed to have peculiar gifts, and an education and training suited to the art of governing and advising men; they should be able to discern what the populace does not often see. Prescience is the specialty of the statesman; and because a populace is blind, that is no excuse for his defect of vision. For the false view obtaining at Washington and at Montgomery in the opening of the war, there is a very curt and

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NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN RESOURCES.

131 quite sufficient explanation. It is that there was really but little statesmanship in America, and that much which passed current under that name was nothing more than the educated and ingenious demagogueism, which reflects vividly the opinions of the masses, and acts out the fancies of the hour. It does seem indeed almost incredible that public men at Washington and at Montgomery could have observed the crisis, without considering the resources and the temper of each section; for each of these elements in the contest showed plainly enough that it was to be one of immense extent and indefinite duration.

It will be interesting here to make a brief statement of the resources of the United States about the time of the war, and to show how they were divided between the two belligerents.

The census of the United States, of 1860, showed a population of more than thirty-one millions. A web of railroads, the wonder of the world, stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Missouri River; and the most important of these had been constructed within the last thirty years, for in 1830 there was but one railway connecting the great Lakes with tide-water. The total extent of these railroads was more than thirty thousand miles. Their tonnage per annum was estimated at thirty-six million tons, valued at about four thousand millions of dollars. Such was the huge internal commerce of the United States. Their manufactures formed an enormous fund of wealth; they represented an annual product of two thousand millions of dollars. In the census of 1860, we have, as the total assessed value of real estate and personal property in the thirty-four States and Territories the monstrous sum of sixteen thousand millions of dollars.

But of population, of internal improvements, of manufactures, and of all artificial wealth the North held much the larger share. She had a population of twenty-three millions against eight millions in the South. The North had manufacturing establishments for all the requirements of peace and war. She had the advantages of an unrestrained commerce with foreign nations. She had all the ports of the world open to her ships; she had furnaces, foundries, and workshops; her manufacturing resources compared with those of the South were as five hundred to one; the great marts of Europe were open to her for supplies of arms and stores; there was nothing of material resource, nothing of the apparatus of conquest that was not within her reach; and she had the whole world wherein to find mercenary soldiers and a market for recruits.

Yet one fact is to be admitted here, which may strike many readers with surprise, and which furnishes a subject of curious reflection, with reference to what we shall hereafter see of the management of their resources by the Confederates. This remarkable fact is that about the beginning of the war the South was richer than the North in all the necessaries of life. It is sufficient to compile certain results from the

census of 1860 to show this: Of live stock (milch cows, working oxen, other cattle, sheep and swine) in the Northern States there were two to each person; in the Southern States, five to each person. Of wheat each person in the Northern States reckoned six bushels; each white person in the Southern States about as much. Of Indian corn, each person in the Northern States reckoned twenty-eight bushels; while in the Southern States each white person reckoned fifty-one bushels, and white and black together stood for thirty-five bushels per head.

But the South entered the war with only a few insignificant manufactories of arms and materials of war and textile fabrics. She was soon to be cut off by an encircling blockade from all those supplies upon which she had depended from the North and from Europe in the way of munitions of war, clothing, medicines, etc. She was without the vestige of a navy; while, on the water, the North was to call into existence a power equivalent to a land force of many hundred thousand men.

It had been feared that in the haste of preparation for the mighty contest that was to ensue, the South would find herself poorly provided with arms to contend with an enemy rich in the means and munitions of war. But in respect of small arms, at least, she found herself amply furnished. Mr. Floyd, the Secretary of War under Mr. Buchanan's administration, had taken occasion to transfer to the different arsenals at the South more than one hundred thousand muskets. This proceeding was long a favorite theme of reproach and censure in the North, and was most unjustly taken as a proof of incipient treason in Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet. It was certainly an important assistance to the South (although this contribution of arms was really less than was due her); for without it she would have been hurried into the war with the few and very imperfect arms purchased by the States, or owned by the citizens.*

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*For years the accusation clung to Secretary Floyd that he improperly and fraudulently supplied the South with these muskets, and "the story of the stolen arms was perpetuated in every variety of Yankee publication. It is strange indeed, as ex-President Buchanan remarks in a recent printed defence of his Administration, "to what extent public prejudice may credit a falsehood, not only without foundation, but against the clearest official evidence." Let us see how the facts rednce this story of fraud and "treason:" In December, 1859, Secretary Floyd had ordered the removal of one-fifth of the old percussion and flint-lock muskets from the Springfield Armory, where they had accumulated in inconvenient numbers, to five Southern arsenals. The United States had, on hand, say 500,000 of these muskets; 115,000 includes all transferred to the Southern arsenals. And this order of distribution was made, almost a year before Mr. Lincoln's election, and several months before his nomination at Chicago. Again, in 1860, the aggregate of rifles and muskets distributed was 10,151, of which the Southern and Southwestern States received only 2,849, or between one-third and one-fourth of the whole number. It thus apgears that the Southern and Southwestern States received much less in the aggregate, instead of more than the quota of arms to which they were justly entitled under the law for arming the militia. Could the force of misreprentation further go than to torture from these facts the charge that Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of War had fraudulently sent public arms to the South for the use of the insurgents! Yet this is but one example of that audacity and hardy persistence in falsehood displayed in all Northern publications concerning the war.

TWO CAUSES OF FAILURE.

133

But it may be said here generally that against the vast superiority of the North in material resources and in the apparatus of war, the South had a set-off in certain advantages, not appreciable perhaps by superficial observers, but which constitute a most important element in a true historical estimate of the match between the two belligerents. The coarse popular opinion in the North was that the superiority of numbers would give it an overwhelming preponderance of strength. But something more than numbers makes armies; and war is not a duel, a single contest despatched according to an established routine. The South had a superiour animation in the war. She stood on the defensive; and should thus have been able to put against the invading force two enemies: the opposing army and the people. She had, also, on her side one single advantage which should have been decisive of the contest-an advantage which no numbers could really surmount, or skill effectively circumvent. That advantage was space. It had been the victor in many former wars. When Napoleon invaded Russia, he won battles, he obtained the very object of his march; but space defeated him--the length of the march from Warsaw to Moscow ruined him. When Great Britain attempted to subdue only that part of America that borders the Atlantic, space defeated her; her armies took the principal cities, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah, Richmond; but victories were barren of result, the Continental troops, dispersed in the country, were easily re-assembled, the lines of military occupation existed only on paper, and the process of conquest became one of hopeless repetition, and was at last abandoned in despair.

In an intelligent view of the precedents of history it might safely be predicted that the South, fighting on its own soil, and for it, and occupying a territory of more than 728,000 square miles in extent, and in which the natural features of the country, in mountain, river, and swamp, were equivalent to successive lines of fortification, would be victor in the contest, however unequally matched in men and the material of war, unless the management of her affairs should become insane, or her people lose the virtue of endurance.

CHAPTER VIII.

MR. LINCOLN'S REMARK ABOUT THE WOLF.-HIS DESIGNS UPON VIRGINIA.-FEDERAL OCCUPATION OF ALEXANDRIA.-TRAGEDY AT THE MARSHALL HOUSE.-JACKSON, THE MARTYR.— THE AFFAIR OF GREAT BETHEL.-EASY VICTORY OF THE CONFEDERATES.-EXAGGERATIONS OF SOUTHERN NEWSPAPERS.-APPARENT LULL OF HOSTILITIES.-NEW DEMONSTRATIONS OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE NORTH.-FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES AT WASHINGTON.POPULAR CLAMOUR AGAINST PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND GEN. SCOTT.-EARLY INDICATIONS OF THE REAL OBJECTS OF THE WAR.-THE RIGHTS OF HUMANITY.-VIRGINIA THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WAR. THE GRAND ARMY OF THE NORTII.-CONSULTATION OF PRESIDENT DAVIS AND BEAUREGARD AND LEE.—BEAUREGARD'S LIne of defenCE IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA.-SKETCH OF GENERAL BEAUREGARD.-HIS PERSON AND MANNERS.-HIS OPINION OF THE YANKEE.-THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC AND THE ARMY OF THE SHENANDOAH.

GEN. JOHNSTON'S EVACUATION OF HARPER'S FERRY.-" STONEWALL JACKSON'S FIRST

AFFAIR WITH THE ENEMY.-JOHNSTON AMUSING THE ENEMY.-AFFAIR OF RICH MOUN-
TAIN.-MCCLELLAN'S MARCH INTO NORTHWESTERN VIRGINIA.-ROSECRANS' CAPTURE OF
THE CONFEDERATE FORCE ON RICH MOUNTAIN.-RETREAT OF THE CONFEDERATES FROM
LAUREL HILL.-DEATH OF GEN. GARNETT.-EXTENT OF THE DISASTER TO THE CONFEDER-
66
ATES.-THE GRAND ARMY ADVANCING ON MANASSAS.-JOHNSTON'S MOVEMENT TO
BEAUREGARD'S LINE.-THE BATTLE OF MANASSAS.-THE AFFAIR OF 18TH JULY.-LONG-
STREET'S GALLANT DEFENCE.—THEATRE OF THE GREAT BATTLE.—BEAUREGARD'S CHANGE
OF PURPOSE, AND HIS PLAN OF BATTLE.—THE STONE BRIDGE.—THE BIG FOREST."-THE

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CONFEDERATES FLANKED. THE DAY APPARENTLY LOST FOR THEM.—THE SCENE AT THE HENRY HOUSE.-TIMELY ARRIVAL OF JACKSON.-GEN. BEAUREGARD DISCONCERTED.-RIDE FROM THE HILL TO THE HENRY HOUSE.-THE BATTLE RESTORED. THE BLOODY PLATEAU. -THREE STAGES IN THE BATTLE.-THE LAST EFFORT OF THE ENEMY.-THE STRANGE FLAG.-ARRIVAL OF KIRBY SMITH.-THE GRAND AND FINAL CHARGE.-ROUT AND PANIO OF THE ENEMY. THE FEARFUL RACE TO THE POTOMAC.-SCENES OF THE RETREAT.— FAILURE OF THE CONFEDERATES TO PURSUE, OR TO ADVANCE UPON WASHINGTON.—A LOST

OPPORTUNITY.

SOME weeks after the secession of Virginia, Mr. Lincoln is said to have remarked that he "would soon get the wolf by the ears." He probably meant in this figure of the backwoodsman that he would soon secure the two important passages into Virginia: that along the Orange and Alexandria and Central Railroads towards Richmond, and that along the water avenue of the James.

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