Confederacy.

Lincoln indeed had acted as any prudent civilian Minister would then
have acted. But disaster followed, or rather there followed, with
brief interruption, a succession of disasters which, after this long
tale of hesitation, can be quickly told. It would be easy to represent
them as a judgment upon the Administration which had rejected the
guidance of McClellan. But in the true perspective of the war, the
point which has now been reached marks the final election by the North
of the policy by which it won the war. McClellan, even if he had taken
Richmond while Washington remained safe, would have concentrated the
efforts of the North upon a line of advance which gave little promise
of finally reducing the Confederacy. It is evident to-day that the
right course for the North was to keep the threatening of Richmond and
the recurrent hammering at the Southern forces on that front duly
related to that continual process by which the vitals of the Southern
country were being eaten into from the west. This policy, it has been
seen, was present to Lincoln's mind from an early day; the temptation
to depart from it was now once for all rejected. On the other hand,
the three great Southern victories, the second battle of Bull Run,
Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, which followed within the next
nine months, had no lasting influence. Jefferson Davis might perhaps
have done well if he had neglected all else and massed every man he
could gather to pursue the advantage which these battles gave him. He
did not--perhaps could not--do this. But he concentrated his greatest
resource of all, the genius of Lee, upon a point at which the real
danger did not lie.

Pope had now set vigorously to work collecting and pulling together his
forces, which had previously been scattered under different commanders
in the north of Virginia. He was guilty of a General Order which
shocked people by its boastfulness, insulted the Eastern soldiers by a
comparison with their Western comrades, and threatened harsh and most
unjust treatment of the civil population of Virginia. But upon the
whole he created confidence, for he was an officer well trained in his
profession as well as an energetic man. The problem was now to effect
as quickly as possible the union of Pope's troops and McClellan's in an
overwhelming force. Pope was anxious to keep McClellan unmolested
while he embarked his men. So, to occupy the enemy, he pushed bold