rights, bequeathed to them by the ancestry of the North and South.  How was it with the South?  Not a tear, not a murmur.  The mothers, with that Spartan spirit, buckled on the armor of their sons with pride and courage, and with the Spartan injunction, bade them “come home with your shield, or on it.”  The fathers, like the Scottish Chieftain, if he lost his first born, would put forward his next, and say, “Another one for Hector.”  Their storehouses, their barns, and graneries were thrown open, and with lavish hands bade the soldiers come and take—­come and buy without money and without price.  Even the poor docile slave, for whom some would pretend these billions of treasure were given and oceans of blood spilled, toiled on in peace and contentment, willing to make any and every sacrifice, and toil day and night, for the interest and advancement of his master’s welfare.  He was as proud of his master’s achievements, of our victories, and was even as willing to throw his body in this bloody vortex as if the cause had been his own.  The women of the South, from the old and bending grandmothers, who sat in the corner, with their needles flying steady and fast, to the aristocratic and pampered daughter of wealth, toiled early and toiled late with hands and bodies that never before knew or felt the effects of work—­all this that the soldier in the trenches might be clothed and fed—­not alone for members of their families, but for the soldiers all, especially those who were strangers among us—­those who had left their homes beyond the Potomac and the Tennessee.  The good housewife stripped her household to send blankets and bedding to the needy soldiers.  The wheel and loom could be heard in almost every household from the early morn until late at night going to give not comforts, but necessities of life, to the boys in the trenches.  All ranks were leveled, and the South was as one band of brothers and sisters.  All formality and restraint were laid aside, and no such thing as stranger known.  The doors were thrown open to the soldiers wherever and whenever they chose to enter; the board was always spread, and a ready welcome extended.  On the march, when homes were to be passed, or along the sidewalks in cities, the ladies set the bread to baking and would stand for hours in the doorway or at some convenient window to cut and hand out slice after slice to the hungry soldiers as long as a loaf was left or a soldier found.

With such a people to contend, with such heroes to face in the field, was it any wonder that the North began to despair of ever conquering the South?  There was but one way by which the Northern leaders saw possible to defeat such a nation of “hereditary madmen in war.”  It was by continually wearing them away by attrition.  Every man killed in the South was one man nearer the end.  It mattered not what the cost might be—­if two or a dozen soldiers fell, if a dozen households were put in mourning, and widows and orphans were made by the