es of the Union. Society was constructed in all
these States on a military basis, the laboring class being held in place
by the power of the sword. An aristocracy is always preceded by military
ambition; for all subordinate orders of its people have acquired the
habit of respect for rank and implicit obedience to superiors, so
essential to success in war. When the war broke out, the Slave Power was
ready. Its arms and ammunition and forts were stolen; its military
organizations had been perfected in secret societies; its generals were
selected--its president perhaps the best general of all; its military
surveys were made, every Southern State mapped, and every strategical
point marked; its subordinate officers, in which the real efficiency of
an army consists, had been educated in military schools kept by such
teachers as Hill and Stonewall Jackson. It had a full crop of cotton as
a basis for finance. Its government was practically such a despotism as
does not exist in the world. At the sound of the first gun in
Charleston, the aristocracy sprang to arms; in a fortnight every
strategical point in fifteen States was practically in its possession,
and Washington tottered to its fall.

The people, as the people always are, were unprepared for war. Their
entire energies had been concentrated for forty years in organizing the
gigantic victory of peace which they had just achieved. When they woke
up to the idea that there was yet another battle to be fought before the
aristocracy would subside, they _began to learn the art of war_. And
never did the people begin a great war so unprepared. The people of
Europe have always had military traditions and cultivation to fall back
upon in their civil wars. The North had no military traditions later
than the Revolution, for no war since that day had really called forth
their hearty efforts. Three generations of peace had destroyed even
respect for war as an employment fit for civilized men. There were not
ten thousand trained soldiers in all the nineteen States in April, 1861.
There were not good arms to furnish fifty thousand troops in the
possession of the National or loyal State Governments. Most of the
ablest military men of the North had left the army, and were engaged in
peaceful occupations. Halleck was in the law; McClellan, Burnside,
Banks, on the railroad; Mitchel and Sigel teaching schoolboys; Hooker,
Kearny, McCall, Dix, retired gentlemen; Fremont digging gold; Rosecrans
m