252 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
challenge, and counter-challenge, still some belated at- tempts at conciliation and reconciliation. Then the guns heard at Sumter wake the dullest from their sleep. There is busy marching to and fro, a death here, a death there, a broken skirmish with uncertain victory. Two armed mobs gather near Washington, rush at each other, sway back and forth like two monsters in blind fury, part, and the routed Unionists hurry in confusion from the field of Bull Run, leaving the South victor in the first great batde.
Act two keeps the South still ahead. In the West, to be sure, one Union man, with slow, steady, iron fist, ham- mers his way upward, regardless of opposition, indiffer- ent to failure, seeing the end clearly from the beginning. Moreover, the Union navy, with its strangling blockade, played from the first the part that was to prove most significant of all.
But the eastern side of the stage, the more conspicu- ous side, was for two years full of Southern triumph. Jackson, dashing hither and thither with the speed of Napoleon, drove his bewildered opponents from the Val- ley. Lee, succeeding Johnston in command of the Army of Northern Virginia, drew Jackson to himself, and com- pelled the superior forces of McClellan to abandon the Peninsula. Lincoln, seeking a great man in vain, tried the boasting Pope. Lee and Jackson beat him at Bull Run. McClellan was tried again, failed to conquer at Antietam, and was dropped once more. Lincoln turned
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