But if the British Government was now quietly operating upon the theory of an ultimate Northern victory, or at least with the view that the only hope for the South lay in a Northern weariness of war, the leading British newspapers were still indulging in expressions of confidence in the South while at the same time putting much faith in the expected defeat of Lincoln at the polls.  As always at this period, save for the few newspapers avowedly friendly to the North and one important daily professing strict neutrality—­the Telegraph—­the bulk of the metropolitan press took its cue, as well as much of its war news, from the columns of the Times.  This journal, while early assuming a position of belief in Southern success, had yet given both sides in the war fair accuracy in its reports—­those of the New York correspondent, Mackay, always excepted.  But from June, 1864, a change came over the Times; it was either itself deceived or was wilfully deceiving its readers, for steadily every event for the rest of the year was coloured to create an impression of the unlimited powers of Southern resistance.  Read to-day in the light of modern knowledge of the military situation throughout the war, the Times gave accurate reports for the earlier years but became almost hysterical; not to say absurd, for the last year of the conflict.  Early in June, 1864, Grant was depicted as meeting reverses in Virginia and as definitely checked, while Sherman in the West was being drawn into a trap in his march toward Atlanta[1211].  The same ideas were repeated throughout July.  Meanwhile there had begun to be printed a series of letters from a Southern correspondent at Richmond who wrote in contempt of Grant’s army.

“I am at a loss to convey to you the contemptuous tone in which the tried and war-worn soldiers of General Lee talk of the huddled rabble of black, white, and copper-coloured victims (there are Indians serving under the Stars and Stripes) who are at times goaded up to the Southern lines....  The truth is that for the first time in modern warfare we are contemplating an army which is at once republican and undisciplined[1212].”

At the moment when such effusions could find a place in London’s leading paper the facts of the situation were that the South was unable to prevent almost daily desertions and was wholly unable to spare soldiers to recover and punish the deserters.  But on this the Times was either ignorant or wilfully silent.  It was indeed a general British sentiment during the summer of 1864, that the North was losing its power and determination in the war[1213], even though it was unquestioned that the earlier “enthusiasm for the slave-holders” had passed away[1214].  One element in the influence of the Times was its seeming impartiality accompanied by a pretentious assertion of superior information and wisdom that at times irritated its contemporaries, but was recognized as making this journal the most powerful agent in England.  Angry at a Times editorial in February, 1863, in which Mason had been berated for a speech made at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, The Index declared: