f
appointing generals and removing them under improper political
influences. This general charge, however, rests upon a limited number
of alleged instances, and all of these which are of any importance will
necessarily be examined in later chapters.

It may be useful to a reader who wishes to follow the main course of
the war carefully, if the chief ways in which geographical facts
affected it are here summarised--necessarily somewhat dryly. Minor
operations at outlying points on the coast or in the Far West will be
left out of account, so also will a serious political consideration,
which we shall later see caused doubt for a time as to the proper
strategy of the North.

It must be noted first, startling as it may be to Englishmen who
remember the war partly by the exploits of the _Alabama_, that the
naval superiority of the North was overwhelming. In spite of many
gallant efforts by the Southern sailors, the North could blockade their
coasts and could capture most of the Southern ports long before its
superiority on land was established. Turning then to land, we may
treat the political frontier between the two powers, after a short
preliminary stage of war, as being marked by the southern boundaries of
Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, just as they are seen
on the map to-day. In doing so, we must note that at the commencement
of large operations parts of Kentucky and Missouri were occupied by
Southern invading forces. This frontier is cut, not far from the
Atlantic, by the parallel mountain chains which make up the Alleghanies
or Appalachians. These in effect separated the field of operations
into a narrow Eastern theatre of war, and an almost boundless Western
theatre; and the operations in these two theatres were almost to the
end independent of each other.

In the Eastern theatre of war lies Washington, the capital of the
Union, a place of great importance to the North for obvious reasons,
and especially because if it fell European powers would be likely to
recognise the Confederacy. It lies, on the Potomac, right upon the
frontier; and could be menaced also in the rear, for the broad and
fertile trough between the mountain chains formed by the valley of the
Shenandoah River, which flows northward to join the Potomac at a point
north-west of Washington, was in Confederate hands and formed a sort of
sally-port by which a force from Richmond could get almost behind
Washington. A hundred mi