In defence the balance of endurance inclined neither to one side nor the other.  Both Southerner and Northerner displayed that stubborn resolve to maintain their ground which is the peculiar attribute of the Anglo-Saxon.  To claim for any one race a pre-eminence of valour is repugnant alike to good taste and to sound sense.  Courage and endurance are widely distributed over the world’s surface, and political institutions, the national conception of duty, the efficiency of the corps of officers, and love of country, are the foundation of vigour and staunchness in the field.  Yet it is a fact which can hardly be ignored, that from Crecy to Inkermann there have been exceedingly few instances where an English army, large or small, has been driven from a position.  In the great struggle with France, neither Napoleon nor his marshals, although the armies of every other European nation had fled before them, could boast of having broken the English infantry; and no soldiers have ever received a prouder tribute than the admission of a generous enemy, “They never know when they are beaten.”  In America, the characteristics of the parent race were as prominent in the Civil War as they had been in the Revolution.  In 1861-65, the side that stood on the defensive, unless hopelessly outnumbered, was almost invariably successful, just as it had been in 1776-82.  “My men,” said Jackson, “sometimes fail to drive the enemy from his position, but to hold one, never!” The Federal generals might have made the same assertion with almost equal truth.  Porter had indeed been defeated at Gaines’ Mill, but he could only set 35,000 in line against 55,000; Banks had been overwhelmed at Winchester, but 6,500 men could hardly have hoped to resist more than twice their strength; and Shields’ advanced guard at Port Republic was much inferior to the force which Jackson brought against it; yet these were the only offensive victories of the ’62 campaign.  But if in defence the armies were well matched, it must be conceded that the Northern attack was not pressed with the same concentrated vigour as the Southern.  McClellan at Sharpsburg had more than twice as many men as Lee; Pope, on the first day of the Second Manassas, twice as many as Jackson; yet on both occasions the smaller force was victorious.  But, in the first place, the Federal tactics in attack were always feeble.  Lincoln, in appointing Hooker to command the Army of the Potomac, warned him “to put in all his men.”  His sharp eye had detected the great fault which had characterised the operations of his generals.  Their assaults had been piecemeal, like those of the Confederates at Malvern Hill, and they had been defeated in detail by the inferior numbers.  The Northern soldiers were strangers to those general and combined attacks, pressed with unyielding resolution, which had won Winchester, Gaines’ Mill, and the Second Manassas, and which had nearly won Kernstown.  The Northern generals invariably kept large masses in reserve,