“No, Jack was eager for the field.  When the battle comes he meets it coolly, but he has no hunger for it, nor have I. General Johnston is as brave a man as ever headed an army, yet he has often told us that his blood freezes when the guns open.  I’m sure no one would ever suspect it, for he is as calm and confident as if he were in a quadrille when he rides to the field.”

“We in the North have heard more of Beauregard than Johnston, yet I never hear you mention him.  Wasn’t it he who commanded at Bull Run?”

“Yes and no.  General Beauregard is a superb soldier.  He is, it has been agreed among us, better for a desperate charge, or some sudden inspiration in an emergency, than the complicated strategy that half wins a battle before it is begun.  For example, at Manassas he would have been defeated, our whole army captured, if fortune had not exposed General McDowell’s plans before they were completed.  As it was, we should have been driven from the field if General Johnston had not come up in time and rearranged the Confederate lilies.”

“Yes, Jack has described that.  Battles, after all, are decided by luck.”

“And genius.”

“Luck won Waterloo.”

“Partly, but genius, too, for Wellington and Bluecher practiced one of Napoleon’s most perfect maxims, and won because he despised them both so much that he didn’t dream them capable of even imitating him.  Nor, left to themselves, would they have been equal to it.  But renegade Frenchmen, taught under Napoleon’s eye, prompted them.”

“General Johnston was very considerate to us when we came down.  I wish you would make him know how grateful we are.”

“Oh, he couldn’t be anything else; he is the ideal of a chivalrous knight.”

“Yes, I believe you claim chivalry as your strong point in the South, and accuse us of being a race of sordid money-getters.”

“I don’t, for I know better, but our people do.  They will learn better in time.  Men who fought as your army fought at Manassas must be more than mere sordid hucksters.”

“And yet it is curious,” Mrs. Sprague continued, musingly, “it is we who are warring for an idea and you are warring for property.”

“How do you mean?” Vincent said, quickly.

“You are fighting to continue slavery, to extend it; we to abolish it or limit it.  But even I can see that slavery is doomed.  No Northern party would ever venture to give it toleration after this.”

“But if we succeed, it will exist in our union at least.”

“Ah, Vincent, can’t you see that such a people as ours may be checked, beaten even, but they will never give up the Union?  Why, much as I love Jack, I would never let him leave the colors while there was an army in the field.  Don’t you know every Northern mother has the same feeling?”

“And every Southern mother, too.”

“Yes, I believe that, but there’s this difference:  Your Southern mothers are counting on what doesn’t exist—­a higher physical courage—­a prowess in battle, I may call it, that you must know the Southern soldier has not, as distinguished from the Northern.  As time goes on and the war does not end; as our armies become disciplined, the confidence that supports your side will die, and then the struggle, though it may be prolonged, will end in our triumph.”