of the time showed that the menace of
disaffection had been met and sufficiently conquered. The President had
let the nation see the strength of his will and the immutability of his
purpose. He had faced bullying Republican politicians, a Democratic
reaction, Copperheadism, and mob violence, and by none of these had he
been in the least degree shaken or diverted from his course. On the
contrary, from so many and so various struggles he had come out the
victor, a real ruler of the country. He had shown that whenever and by
whomsoever, and in whatever part of the land he was pushed to use power,
he would use it. Temporarily the great republic was under a "strong
government," and Mr. Lincoln was the strength. Though somewhat cloaked
by forms, there was for a while in the United States a condition of
"one-man power," and the people instinctively recognized it, though they
would on no account admit it in plain words. In fact every malcontent
knew that there was no more use in attempting to resist the American
President than in attempting to resist a French emperor or a Russian
czar; there was even less use, for while the President managed on one
plausible ground or another to have and to exercise all the power that
he needed, he was sustained by the good-will and confidence of a
majority of the people, which lay as a solid substratum beneath all the
disturbance on the surface. It was well that this was so, for a war
conducted by a cabinet or a congress could have ended only in disaster.
This peculiar character of the situation may not be readily admitted; it
is often convenient to deny and ignore facts in order to assert popular
theories; and that there was a real _master_ in the United States is a
proposition which many will consider it highly improper to make and very
patriotic to contradict. None the less, however, it is true, and by the
autumn of 1863 every intelligent man in the country _felt_ that it was
true. Moreover, it was because this was true, and because that master
was immovably persistent in the purpose to conquer the South, that the
conquest of the South could now be discerned as substantially a
certainty in the future.

Some other points should also be briefly made here. The war is to be
divided into two stages. The first two years were educational;
subsequently the fruits of that education were attained. The men who had
studied war as a profession, but had had no practical experience, found
much to learn i