In the matter of leadership the South had certain very real and certain other apparent but probably delusive advantages.  The United States had no large number of trained military officers, still capable of active service.  The armies of the North and South alike had to be commanded and staffed to a great extent by men who first studied their profession in that war; and the lack of ripe military judgment was likely to be felt most in the higher commands where the forces to be employed and co-ordinated were largest.  The South secured what may be called its fair proportion of the comparatively few officers, but it was of tremendous moment that, among the officers who, when the war began, were recognised as competent, two, who sadly but in simple loyalty to the State of Virginia took the Southern side, were men of genius.  The advantages of the South would have been no advantages without skill and resolution to make use of them.  The main conditions of the war—­the vast space, the difficulty in all parts of it of moving troops, the generally low level of military knowledge—­were all such as greatly enhance the opportunities of the most gifted commander.  Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson thus became, the former throughout the war, the latter till he was killed in the summer of 1863, factors of primary importance in the struggle.  Wolseley, who had, besides studying their record, conversed both with Lee and with Moltke, thought Lee even greater than Moltke, and the military writers of our day speak of him as one of the great commanders of history.  As to Jackson, Lee’s belief in him is sufficient testimony to his value.  And the good fortune of the South was not confined to these two signal instances.  Most of the Southern generals who appeared early in the war could be retained in important commands to the end.

The South might have seemed at first equally fortunate in the character of the Administration at the back of the generals.  An ascendency was at once conceded to Jefferson Davis, a tried political leader, to which Lincoln had to win his way, and the past experiences of the two men had been very different.  The operations of war in which Lincoln had taken part were confined, according to his own romantic account in a speech in Congress, to stealing ducks and onions from the civil population; his Ministers were as ignorant in the matter as he; their military adviser, Scott, was so infirm that he had soon to retire, and it proved most difficult to replace him.  Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, started with knowledge of affairs, including military affairs; he had been Secretary of War in Pierce’s Cabinet and Chairman of the Senate Committee on War since then; above all, he had been a soldier and had commanded a regiment with some distinction in the Mexican War.  It is thought that he would have preferred a military command to the Presidency of the Confederacy, and as his own experience of actual war was as great as that of his