Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/454

CHAPTER XV.

FEDERAL RELIANCE ON PHYSICAL FORCE.

COMPARISON OF RESOURCES—THE ADVANCE TOWARD RICHMOND—CURIOUS STORY OF THE FIRST MANASSAS TOLD IN THE RECORDS—THE DISCOMFITURE TURNED TO POLITICAL ADVANTAGE—CONFEDERATE FLAGS IN FULL VIEW FROM WASHINGTON—QUESTION OF OFFENSIVE OR DEFENSIVE WAR—ADDITIONAL COMMISSIONS FROM THE CONFEDERACY TO EUROPE—ACTS OF CONFEDERATE CONGRESS—THE TRENT AFFAIR.

ALL civil movements of the period centered on the military situation. War was fully on between two powerful nations having the same civilization, language, religion and general ideas of government, and both unprepared to fight. The North with twenty million population, a regular army and navy, many manufactures of munitions, superiority in wealth, and with free access to the world by land and sea, was arrayed against the South with its six million white population, army and navy to create and to arm, without war supplies and with ports nearly closed. In intelligence, courage, energy, morality and devotion to country let it be conceded simply that the two peoples were equal. In physical resources it is plain that the superiority was with the North in the lowest proportion of three to one—but more accurately, five to one. Enthusiasm in its cause pervaded the South so that on the venture for independence its people in rare unity pledged all they possessed; while opposing appeals for the preservation of the Union and defense of the capital, coupled with the avowal that these alone were the objects of the

416