anufacturing oil, and Grant in a tanyard; and so on to the end of the
chapter; while Scott, the patriot hero, who was but once defeated in
fifty years' service, was passing over into the helplessness of old age.
Of course such a people did not realize the value of military education,
and fell into the natural delusion that a multitude of men carrying guns
and wearing blue coats is an army; and any 'smart man' can make a
colonel in three months. There was not even a corporal in the Cabinet,
and Mr, Lincoln's military exploits were confined to one campaign, in
the war of 1812, and one challenge to fight a duel. There were not ten
Northern men in Congress who could take a company into action. In short,
we had the art of war to learn; even did not know it was necessary to
learn to fight as to do anything else; especially to fight against an
aristocracy that had been studying war for forty years.

For more than three years have the people of the United States waged
this gigantic war thus precipitated upon them by their aristocracy to
arrest the irresistible growth of modern society in the republic. Every
year has been a period of great success, though our peaceful population,
unacquainted with war, and often ignorant of the vast issues of this
conflict, have often inclined to despondency. Of course the aristocracy
fought best, at first, as every aristocracy in the world has done. With
half our number of better disciplined troops, better commanded and
man[oe]uvred, and the great advantage of interior lines, supported by
railroad communications, and possessing in Virginia, perhaps, the most
defensible region in the Union, they held our Army of the Potomac at bay
for two years; have thrice overrun Maryland and the Pennsylvania border,
and yet hold their fortified capital; while every step of our victorious
progress in the Southwest has been bitterly contested. Yet this war of
martial forces has been strangely like the long, varied war of material,
moral, and political forces of which it is the logical sequel.

The Union navy won the earliest laurels in the war. The navy has been
the right arm of the people in all ages. The Athenian navy repelled the
invasion of Greece by the Persian empire. Antony, Pompey, Caesar, the
people's leaders in Rome, built up their youthful power upon the sea.
The Dutch and English navies saved religious and civil liberty in the
sixteenth century; and all the constitutional Governments that now exist