that the South had started upon a desperate venture.  There can hardly be a more difficult problem of detail for statesmen than the co-ordination of military and civil requirements in the raising of an army.  But in the South all civil considerations merged themselves in the paramount necessity of a military success for which all knew the utmost effort was needed.  The several States of the South, claiming as they did a far larger independence than the Northern States, knew that they could only make that claim good by being efficient members of the Confederacy.  Thus it was comparatively easy for the Confederate Government to adopt and maintain a consecutive policy in this matter, and though, from the conditions of a widely spread agricultural population, voluntary enlistment produced poor results at the beginning of the war, it appears to have been easy to introduce quite early an entirely compulsory system of a stringent kind.

The introduction of compulsory service in the North has its place in our subsequent story.  The system that preceded it need not be dwelt upon here, because, full of instruction as a technical study of it (such as has been made by Colonel Henderson) must be, no brief survey by an amateur could be useful.  It is necessary, however, to understand the position in which Lincoln’s Administration was placed, without much experience In America, or perhaps elsewhere in the world, to guide it.  It must not be contended, for it cannot be known that the problem was fully and duly envisaged by Lincoln on his Cabinet, but it would probably in any case have been impossible for them to pursue from the first a consecutive and well-thought-out policy for raising an army and keeping up its strength.  The position of the North differed fundamentally from that of the South; the North experienced neither the ardour nor the throes of a revolution; it was never in any fear of being conquered, only of not conquering.  There was nothing, therefore, which at once bestowed on the Government a moral power over the country vastly in excess of that which it exercised in normal times.  This, however, was really necessary to it if the problem of the Army was to be handled in the way which was desirable from a military point of view.  Compulsory service could not at first be thought of.  It was never supposed that the tiny regular Army of the United States Government could be raised to any very great size by voluntary enlistment, and the limited increase of it which was attempted was not altogether successful.  The existing militia system of the several States was almost immediately found faulty and was discarded.  A great Volunteer Force had to be raised which should be under the command of the President, who by the Constitution is Commander-in-Chief of the forces of the Union, but which must be raised in each State by the State Governor (or, if he was utterly wanting, by leading local citizens).  Now State Governors are not—­it must be recalled—­officers