e his efforts
were unsuccessful, and so nothing remained for me but to retire to the
quiet of my own study and watch the vicissitudes of the awful storm which
I was powerless to avert, and descry the first signs of any clearing up,
ready to take advantage of the earliest glimmerings of light through the
clouds."

He had no doubts as to the ultimate issue of the conflict, for, in a
letter to his wife's sister, Mrs. Goodrich, of May 2, 1862, he reduces it
to mathematics:--

"Sober men could calculate, and did calculate, the _military_ issue, for
it was a problem of mathematics and not at all of individual or
comparative courage. A force of equal quality is to be divided and the
two parts to be set in opposition to each other. If equally divided, they
will be at rest; if one part equals 3 and the other 9, it does not
require much knowledge of mathematics to decide which part will overcome
the force of the other.

"Now this is the case here just now. Two thirds of the physical and
material force of the country are at the North, and on this account
_military_ success, other things being equal, must be on the side of the
North. Courage, justness of the cause, right, have nothing to do with it.
War in our days is a game of chess. Two players being equal, if one
begins the game with dispensing with a third of his best pieces, the
other wins as a matter of course."

He was firmly of the opinion that England and other European nations had
fomented, if they had not originated, the bad feeling between the North
and the South, and at times he gave way to the most gloomy forebodings,
as in a letter of July 23, 1862, to Mr. Kendall, who shared his views on
the main questions at issue:--

"I am much depressed. There is no light in the political skies. Rabid
abolitionism, with its intense, infernal hate, intensified by the same
hate from secession quarters, is fast gaining the ascendancy. Our country
is dead. God only can resuscitate it from its tomb. I see no hope of
union. We are two countries, and, what is most deplorable, two hostile
countries. Oh! how the nations, with England at their head, crow over us.
It is the hour of her triumph; she has conquered by her arts that which
she failed to do by her arms. If there was a corner of the world where I
could hide myself, and I could consult the welfare of my family, I would
sacrifice all my interests here and go at once. May God save us with his
salvation. I have no heart to write