hich they were
about to enter, with a readiness to meet all its contingencies, and,
since the great uprising, with no anticipation of easy work. The North
was hurried into a war for which it had no preparation, to which it had
never looked as a serious probability, and for which it had been
stripped in a great measure, through the pilfering policy of the South,
of the ordinary means at its command. A peaceable and highly civilized
people, among whom actual war upon its own soil had been unknown for
nearly fifty years, and among whom the spirit of war, always so rife at
the South, was opposed and neutralized by a thousand industrial and
peaceful propensities, was suddenly called into the field. Uninstructed
at first in the real nature of the conflict, regarding it as an
unreasonable disaffection, and therefore necessarily limited in extent,
not aroused even yet to a full consciousness of the momentous
consequences involved in the struggle and its gigantic proportions, they
have come to the work, in a great measure, unprepared. Their condition
at its commencement was even less favorable than that of the British
nation at the commencement of the Russian war. Both of these great
industrial peoples, with whom war had fallen among the traditions of the
past, had to begin new struggles by learning anew the theory and
practice of war. The Northern people rose, after the assault on Fort
Sumter demonstrated to them that the South was in earnest, with the
unanimity and power as of a single man, but bewildered and uncertain
which way to turn, or how to grapple with the strange and unaccountable
monster of rebellion which had suddenly precipitated himself among them.
The whole habits of the nation had to undergo a violent and rapid
change. A new educational experience had to be hurried through its
successive courses of instruction. The gristle on the bone of the new
military organization had to have time to harden. Sharp experiences had
to be undergone, and will still have to be endured, as part of the price
of tuition in the novel career to which we have been so unexpectedly
called. Still, we have great power in reserve; no feeling of
discouragement, no thought of abandoning the purpose of maintaining our
integrity as a people, no sense of weakness possesses our minds. Great
and triumphant successes are attending our arms. State after State,
swept at first wholly or in part into the vortex of revolt, is again
included within our mil