people of nineteen millions, was
of enormous extent: leaving out of account the huge outlying State of
Texas, which is larger than Germany, the remaining Southern States
which joined in the Confederacy have an area somewhat larger than that
of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Holland, and Belgium put together; and
this great region had no industrial centres or other points of such
great strategic importance that by the occupation of them the remaining
area could be dominated. The feat which the Northern people eventually
achieved has been said by the English historians of the war (perhaps
with some exaggeration) to have been "a greater one than that which
Napoleon attempted to his own undoing when he invaded Russia in 1812."

On the other hand, the South was in some respects very favourably
placed for resisting invasion from the North. The Southern forces
during most of the war were, in the language of military writers,
operating on interior lines; that is, the different portions of them
lay nearer to one another than did the different portions of the
Northern forces, and could be more quickly brought to converge on the
same point; the country abounded in strong positions for defence which
could be held by a relatively small force, while in every invading
movement the invaders had to advance long distances from the base, thus
exposing their lines of communication to attack. The advantage of this
situation, if competent use were made of it, was bound to go very far
towards compensating for inferiority of numbers; the North could not
make its superior numbers on land tell in any rapidly decisive fashion
without exposing itself to dangerous counter-strokes. In naval
strength its superiority was asserted almost from the first, and by
cutting off foreign supplies caused the Southern armies to suffer
severe privations before the war was half through; but its full effect
could only be produced very slowly. Thus, if its people were brave and
its leaders capable, the South was by no means in so hopeless a case as
might at first have appeared; with good fortune it might hope to strike
its powerful antagonist some deadly blow before that antagonist could
bring its strength to bear; and even if this hope failed, a
sufficiently tenacious defence might well wear down the patience of the
North.

As soldiers the Southerners started with a superiority which the
Northerners could only overtake slowly. If each people were taken in
the m