yielded without further struggle.  Strangers to freedom, crushed by military absolutism, the prostration of each and all to an irresponsible despot had paralysed individual energy.  Spain, on the other hand, without an army and without a ruler, but deriving new strength from each successive defeat, first taught Napoleon that he was not invincible.  And the same spirit of liberty which inspired the people of the Peninsula inspired, to an even higher degree, the people of the Confederate States.

(Map.  The united states. 1861.)

The Northern States, moreover, were about to make a new departure in war.  The manhood of a country has often been called upon to defend its borders; but never before had it been proposed to invade a vast territory with a civilian army, composed, it is true, of the best blood in the Republic, but without the least tincture of military experience.  Nor did the senior officers, professionals though they were, appear more fitted for the enterprise than the men they led.  The command of a company or squadron against the redskins was hardly an adequate probation for the command of an army,* or even a brigade, of raw troops against a well-armed foe. (* Even after the Peninsular War had enlarged the experience of the British army, Sir Charles Napier declared that he knew but one general who could handle 100,000 men, and that was the Duke of Wellington.) Had the volunteers been associated with an equal number of trained and disciplined soldiers, as had been the case in Mexico,* (* Grant’s Memoirs volume 1 page 168.) they would have derived both confidence from their presence, and stability from their example; had there been even an experienced staff, capable of dealing with large forces, and an efficient commissariat, capable of rapid expansion, they might have crushed all organised opposition.  But only 3000 regulars could be drawn from the Western borders; the staff was as feeble as the commissariat; and so, from a purely military point of view, the conquest of the South appeared impossible.  Her self-sustaining power was far greater than has been usually imagined.  On the broad prairies of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana ranged innumerable herds.  The area under cultivation was almost equal to that north of the Potomac and the Ohio.  The pastoral districts—­the beautiful Valley of Virginia, the great plains of Georgia, the fertile bottoms of Alabama, were inexhaustible granaries.  The amount of live stock—­horses, mules, oxen, and sheep—­was actually larger than in the North; and if the acreage under wheat was less extensive, the deficiency was more than balanced by the great harvests of rice and maize.* (* Cf.  U.S.  Census Returns 1860.) Men of high ability, but profoundly ignorant of the conditions which govern military operations, prophesied that the South would be brought back to the Union within ninety days; General Winfield Scott, on the other hand, Commander-in-Chief of the Federal armies, declared that its conquest might be achieved “in two or three years, by a young and able general—­a Wolfe, a Desaix, a Hoche—­with 300,000 disciplined men kept up to that number.”