the
defender to perfection. No attempt had been made to hold the
frontier. Mobility and not earthwork was the weapon on which they had
relied. Richmond, the only fortress, had been used as a pivot of
operations, and not merely as a shelter for the army. The specious
expedient of pushing forward advanced guards to harass or delay the
enemy had been avoided; and thus no opportunity had been offered to
the invaders of dealing with the defence in detail, or of raising
their own morale by victory over isolated detachments. The generals
had declined battle until their forces were concentrated and the
enemy was divided. Nor had they fought except on ground of their own
choice. Johnston had refused to be drawn into decisive action until
McClellan became involved in the swamps of the Chickahominy. Jackson,
imitating like his superior the defensive strategy of Wellington and
Napoleon, had fallen back to a zone of manoeuvre south of the
Massanuttons. By retreating to the inaccessible fastness of Elk Run
Valley he had drawn Banks and Fremont up the Shenandoah, their lines
of communication growing longer and more vulnerable at every march,
and requiring daily more men to guard them. Then, rushing from his
stronghold, he had dealt his blows, clearing the Valley from end to
end, destroying the Federal magazines, and threatening Washington
itself; and when the overwhelming masses he had drawn on himself
sought to cut him off, he had selected his own battle-field, and
crushed the converging columns which his skill had kept apart. The
hapless Pope, too, had been handled in the same fashion as McClellan,
Banks, Shields, and Fremont. Jackson had lured him forward to the
Rapidan; and although his retreat had been speedy, Lee had completed
his defeat before he could be efficiently supported. But,
notwithstanding all that had been done, much yet remained to do.

It was doubtless within the bounds of probability that a second
attempt to invade Virginia would succeed no better than the first.
But it was by no means certain that the resolution of the North was
not sufficient to withstand a long series of disasters so long as the
war was confined to Southern territory; and, at the same time, it
might well be questioned whether the South could sustain, without
foreign aid, the protracted and exhausting process of a purely
defensive warfare. If her tactics, as well as her strategy, could be
confined to the defensive; that is, if her generals could