he
North; he must come to us." Many Southerners, not by any means most,
had formed such impressions.

The remainder of the officers were not so much Northern as Union, a
distinction which meant much in the feeling that underlies action. Our
second lieutenant, with soberer appreciation of conditions than the
marine, said to me, "I cannot understand how those others expect to
win in the face of the overpowering resources of the Northern States."
The leaders of the Confederacy, too, understood this; and while I am
sure that expected dissension in the North, and interference from
Europe, counted for much in their complicated calculations, I imagine
that the marine's overweighted theory, of incompatibility between the
mercantile and military temperaments, also entered largely. My
Kentuckian expressed the characteristic, if somewhat crude, opinion,
that the two had better fight it out now, till one was well licked;
after which his head should be punched and he be told to be decent
hereafter. We had, however, one Northern fire-eater among the
midshipmen. He was a plucky fellow, but with an odd cast to his eyes
and a slight malformation, which made his ecstasies of wrath a little
comical. His denunciations of all half measures, or bounded
sentiments, quite equalled those of the marine officer on the other
side. If the two had been put into the same ring, little could have
been left but a few rags of clothes, so completely did they lose
their heads; but, as often happens with such champions, their
harangues descended mostly on quiet men, conveniently known as
doughfaces.

Doughfaces I suppose we must have been, if the term applied fitly to
those who, between the alternatives of dissolving the Union and
fighting one another, were longing to see some third way open out of
the dilemma. In this sense Lincoln, with his life-long record of
opposition to the extension of slavery, was a doughface. The marine
could afford to harden his face, because he believed there would be no
war--the North would not fight; while the midshipman, rather limited
intellectually, was happy in a mental constitution which could see but
one side of a case; an element of force, but not of conciliation. The
more reflective of my two Southern messmates, a man mature beyond his
years, said to me sadly, "I suppose there will be bloodshed beyond
what the world has known for a long time;" but he naturally shared the
prevalent opinion--so often disproved--that a