1862, the crowning triumph of their toil and valor. A nation's gratitude is evoked to repay all that is due to the valor of our troops and the providence of Almighty God.*

We do not trust ourselves to predict the consequences of cur rent events; and the brilliant story of Manassas, grouped with contemporary victories in the West, must be left to the decisions of the future-trusting as we do that we may have occasion to record in another volume the consequences as well as the details of these events, and to find in the future the fulfilment of the promises of to-day.

A few general reflections on the material and moral phenomena of the war will appropriately conclude our work for the present.

It is a censurable practice to flatter the people. It is equally

* The vulgar and unintelligent mind worships success. The extraordinary and happy train of victories in Virginia seems to have had no other significance or interest to a number of grovelling minds in the South, than as a contribution to the personal fame of General Lee, who by no fault of his own (for no one had more modesty, more Christian dignity of behavior, and a purer conversation), was followed by toadies, flatterers, and newspaper sneaks in epaulets, who made him ridiculous by their servile obeisances and excess of praise. The author does not worship success. He trusts, however, that he has intelligence enough to perceive merit, without being prompted by the vulgar cry; he is sure that he has honesty and independence enough to acknowledge it where he believes it to exist. The estimation of General Lee, made in some preceding pages, was with reference to his unfortunate campaign in Western Virginia; it was founded on the events of that campaign, in which there is no doubt Gen. Lee blundered and showed an absurd mis conception of mountain warfare; and so far as these events furnished evi dence for the historian, the author believes that he was right, unprejudiced, and just in ascribing the failure of that campaign to the misdirection of the commanding general. If, however, it can be shown, as now seems to be likely from incomplete events, that on wider, clearer, and more imposing fields Gen. Lee has shown qualities which the campaign in the mountains of Virginia had not illustrated, the friends of this commander may be assured that the author will be honest and cordial in acknowledging the fact, and that in a future continuation of these annals, justice will be done to the recent extraordinary events in Virginia, fraught with so many critical issues of the war, and associated with so many reputations dear to the people of the South. In writing the facts of this war, the author takes no counsel of popular cries, and notions fashionable in the newspapers; he is neither the panegyrist nor the antagonist of any clique; he is more pleased to praise than to censure, but his aim is truth, and he is resolved to pursue it, no matter what popular prejudice or affection he is compelled to crush in its attainment.

censurable to withhold from them the plain recognition of their accomplishments. The present war will win the respect of the world for the masses of the people of the Confederate States With inferior numbers, with resources hampered on all sides, we are yet winning the issue of the great struggle in which we are involved. No one claims that this is owing to the wisdom of our government. No one ascribes it to the ability of our military chieftains; for blunders in our military management have been as common as in our civil administration. there is a huge, unlettered power that wages the war on our side, overcoming everywhere the power of the enemy and the incumbrances of our own machinery. It is the determined, settled will of the people to be free, and to fight themselves free, that has constituted our strength and our safety.

But

The existing war has, doubtless, disappointed the world in its meagre phenomena of personal greatness, and, to some extent, has disappointed its own people in the bigotry of its policy and the official restraint put upon its spirit. It may be said with singular truth, that it has produced or exhibited but few great men-that it has not raised up to public admiration in the South a statesman, an orator, a poet, or a financier, all which are generally considered as much the natural products of war as military genius itself. For this disappointment, however, we may find an explanation in some degree satisfactory. It is, that the very circumstance of the almost universal uprising of the people of the South, and the equal measures of devotion shown by all classes and intellects, have given but little room for overshadowing names, and presented but little opportunity for marked personal distinctions of greatness.

After all, it is the spirit of the people that is most sure to achieve the victorious results of revolutions; and on this firm reliance, and not on the personal fortunes of master-spirits, or on adventitious aid, or on the calculations of any merely external events, do we rest, under Providence, the hopes of the Southern Confederacy. The verdict of the history of the world is, that no powerful nation has ever been lost except by its own cowardice. All nations that have fought for an independent existence, have had to sustain terrible defeats, live through deep, though temporary distress, and endure hours of profound discouragement. But no nation was ever subdued that really

determined to fight while there was an inch of ground or a solitary soldier left to defend it.

As far as the war has been fought, its results, in a military point of view, are deeply humiliating to the North. The war was commenced by the North with the most intense expressions of contempt for its adversary; the idea of the contest being extended beyond a few months, was derided and spit upon; in that short time it was believed that the flag of the Union would float over the cities and towns of the South, and the bodies of "traitors" dangle from the battlements of Washington.

This was not affectation. It was calculated by many people, in a spirit of candor, that a contest so unequal in the material elements of strength as that between the North and the South would be speedily determined. The North had more than twenty millions of people to break the power of eight millions; it had a militia force about three times as strong as that of the South; it had the regular army; it had an immense advantage over the South in a navy, the value of which may be appreciated when it is known that its achievements in the war have been greater than those of the land forces, and that its strength, with proposed additions to its active war vessels, is estimated to-day in the North as equivalent to an army of half a million

men.

Nor did the superiority of the North end here. While the South was cut off from the world by the restrictions of the blockade, without commerce, with but scanty manufactures and few supplies on hand, the North had all the ports of the world open to its ships; it had furnaces, foundries, and workshops; its manufacturing resources compared with those of the South were as five hundred to one; the great marts of Europe were open to it for supplies of arms and stores; there was nothing of material resource, nothing of the apparatus of conquest that was not within its reach.

These immense elements of superiority on the part of the North have not remained idle in her hands. They have been exercised with tremendous energy. Within the last fifteen months the government at Washington has put forth all its power to subjugate the South; it has contracted a debt six or seven times more than that of the South; it has called out

more than half a million soldiers: it has put Europe under contribution to furnish it not only arms, but soldiers to use them; it has left no resource untried and omitted no condition of success.

The result of all this immense and boasted superiority on the part of the North, coupled with the most immense exertions is, that the South remains unconquered. The result is humiliating enough to the warlike reputation of the North. It has not been separated from its feeble adversary by seas or mountains, but only by a geographical line; nature has not interfered to protect the weak from the strong; three "Grand Armies" have advanced in the Confederate territory; and yet to-day, the Yankees hold in Virginia and Tennessee only the ground they stand upon, and the South, in spirit, is more invincible than ever.

Nor has the war, so far as it has been waged, been without great moral benefits to the South. We may indicate at least three important and inestimable blessings which it has conferred upon our people.

It has made impossible the theory of the "reconstruction" of the old Union, which was no doubt indulged in the early formation of the Confederate government. It has carried a revolution, which, if no war had taken place, would probably have ended in "reconstruction," on the basis of concessions from the Northern States, which would in no way have impaired the advantages of the old Union to them, to a point where the demand for our independence admits of no alternative or compromise. It has revealed to us the true characteristics of the people of the North; it has repulsed us from a people whose vices and black hearts we formerly knew but imperfectly; and it has produced that antagonism and alienation which were necessary to exclude the possibility a reunion with them.

Again the war has shown the system of negro slavery in the South to the world in some new and striking aspects, and has removed mich of that cloud of prejudice, defamation, falsehood, romance, and perverse sentimentalism through which our peculiar institution was formerly known to Europe. It has given a better vindication of our system of slavery than all the books that could be written in a generation. Hereafter

there can be no dispute between facts plainly exhibited and the pictures of romance; and intelligent men of all countries will obtain their ideas of slavery from certain leading and indisputable facts in the history of this war, rather than from partisan sources of information and the literary inventions of the North. The war has shown that slavery has been an element of strength with us; that it has assisted us in the war; that no servile insurrections have taken place in the South, in spite of the allurements of our enemy; that the slave has tilled the soil while his master has fought; that in large districts unprotected by our troops, and with a white population consisting almost exclusively of women and children, the slave has continued at his work, quiet, cheerful, and faithful ̧* and that, as

*The following is taken from the letter of an English nobleman, who visited the South while the war was in its active stages, and the result of whose observations there, at the time war was racking the country and many of our own whites were houseless and starving, was, that the condition of the negro slaves in the South was "better than that of any laboring population in the world."

"

Among the dangers which we had heard at New York threatened the South, a revolt of the slave population was said to be the most imminent. Let us take, then, a peep at the cotton-field, and see what likelihood there is of such a contingency. On the bank of the Alabama river, which winds its yellow course through woods of oak, ash, maple, and pine, thickened with tangled copse of varied evergreens, lie some of the most fertile plantations of the State. One of these we had the advantage of visiting. Its owner received us with all that hospitality and unaffected bonhomie which invariably distinguish a Southern gentleman. Having mounted a couple of hacks, we started off through a large pine wood, and soon arrived at the “clearing" of about two hundred acres in extent, on most of which was growing an average cotton crop. This was a fair sample of the rest of the plantation, which consisted altogether of 7000 acres. Riding into the middle of the field, we found ourselves surrounded by about forty slaves-men, women, and children-engaged in "picking." They were all well dressed, and seemed happy and cheerful. Wishing to know what time of day it was, I asked Mr. the hour, where

upon one of the darkies by my side took out a watch and informed me.

"Do your laborers wear watches, sir?' I inquired.

"A great many of them have. Why, sir, my negroes all have their cotton plats and gardens, and most of them have little orchards.'

"We found from their own testimony that they are fed well, chiefly upon pork, corn, potatoes, and rice, carefully attended to when sick, and on Sundays dress better than their masters. We next visited the 'station,' a street of cottages in a pine wood, where Mr. 's slaves reside. These we found clean and comfortable. Two of the men were sick, and had been visited that