The Federals had had great difficulties to contend with—­an unknown country, bad roads, a hostile population, natural obstacles of formidable character, statesmen ignorant of war, and generals at loggerheads with the Administration.  Yet so superior were their numbers, so ample their resources, that even these disadvantages might have been overcome had the strategy of the Southern leaders been less admirable.  Lee, Jackson, and Johnston had played the role of the defender to perfection.  No attempt had been made to hold the frontier.  Mobility and not earthwork was the weapon on which they had relied.  Richmond, the only fortress, had been used as a pivot of operations, and not merely as a shelter for the army.  The specious expedient of pushing forward advanced guards to harass or delay the enemy had been avoided; and thus no opportunity had been offered to the invaders of dealing with the defence in detail, or of raising their own morale by victory over isolated detachments.  The generals had declined battle until their forces were concentrated and the enemy was divided.  Nor had they fought except on ground of their own choice.  Johnston had refused to be drawn into decisive action until McClellan became involved in the swamps of the Chickahominy.  Jackson, imitating like his superior the defensive strategy of Wellington and Napoleon, had fallen back to a zone of manoeuvre south of the Massanuttons.  By retreating to the inaccessible fastness of Elk Run Valley he had drawn Banks and Fremont up the Shenandoah, their lines of communication growing longer and more vulnerable at every march, and requiring daily more men to guard them.  Then, rushing from his stronghold, he had dealt his blows, clearing the Valley from end to end, destroying the Federal magazines, and threatening Washington itself; and when the overwhelming masses he had drawn on himself sought to cut him off, he had selected his own battle-field, and crushed the converging columns which his skill had kept apart.  The hapless Pope, too, had been handled in the same fashion as McClellan, Banks, Shields, and Fremont.  Jackson had lured him forward to the Rapidan; and although his retreat had been speedy, Lee had completed his defeat before he could be efficiently supported.  But, notwithstanding all that had been done, much yet remained to do.

It was doubtless within the bounds of probability that a second attempt to invade Virginia would succeed no better than the first.  But it was by no means certain that the resolution of the North was not sufficient to withstand a long series of disasters so long as the war was confined to Southern territory; and, at the same time, it might well be questioned whether the South could sustain, without foreign aid, the protracted and exhausting process of a purely defensive warfare.  If her tactics, as well as her strategy, could be confined to the defensive; that is, if her generals could await the invaders in selected and prepared positions, and if no task more difficult