ting compliance with the quite proper demands of Adams, the
American Ambassador. Finally, an International Court found that Great
Britain had not shown "reasonable care" in fulfilling her obligations,
and in this verdict a fair-minded student of the facts will acquiesce.
At a later date we paid to the United States a heavy sum as compensation
for the depredations of the _Alabama_.

Meanwhile, neither Antietam nor the Proclamation appeared to bring any
luck to the Union armies in the field. McClellan showed his customary
over-caution in allowing Lee to escape unhammered; once more he was
superseded, and once more his supersession only replaced inaction by
disaster. Hooker, attempting an invasion of Virginia, got caught in the
tangled forest area called "the Wilderness." Jackson rode round him,
cutting his communications and so forcing him to fight, and Lee beat him
soundly at Chancellorsville. The battle was, however, won at a heavy
cost to the Confederacy, for towards the end of the day the mistake of a
picket caused the death by a Southern bullet of the most brilliant, if
not the greatest, of Southern captains. As to what that loss meant we
have the testimony of his chief and comrade-in-arms. "If I had had
Jackson with me," said Lee after Gettysburg, "I should have won a
complete victory." This, however, belongs to a later period. Burnside,
succeeding Hooker, met at Lee's hands with an even more crushing defeat
at Fredericksburg.

And now, as a result of these Southern successes, began to become
dangerous that factor on which the South had counted from the first--the
increasing weariness and division of the North. I have tried in these
pages to put fairly the case for the defeated side in the Civil War. But
one can have a reasonable understanding of and even sympathy with the
South without having any sympathy to waste on those who in the North
were called "Copperheads." A Northerner might, indeed, honestly think
the Southern cause just and coercion of the seceding States immoral. But
if so he should have been opposed to such coercion from the first. The
Confederate case was in no way morally stronger in 1863 than it had been
in 1861. If, therefore, a man had been in favour of coercion in 1861--as
practically all Northerners were--his weakening two years later could
not point to an unwillingness to do injustice, but only to the operation
of fear or fatigue as deterrents from action believed to be just.
Moreover, the or