arefully
calculate every influence which could affect his plans. He had studied,
and, I believe, he rightly estimated the popular feeling.

Revolutions may be inaugurated and accomplished by the unsworn, unarmed,
unorganized masses; wars, once fairly commenced, must be won by
soldiers. An entire population is frequently ripe for revolution, only a
portion of it is available for, and will enlist for, war. Even had the
most favorable accounts of the unanimity of the people of Kentucky, and
their devotion to the Southern cause, reached General Johnson from
credible sources, he would have been justified in still doubting that he
would derive immediate benefit from it. There are no braver men than the
Tennesseeans, they were then practically unanimous, except in the
eastern portion of the State, they were very ardent, and yet the
Tennesseeans took their time in flocking to the Confederate standard.

The gallantry and patriotism of the Mississippians are as bright as the
light of day; and yet, in September, 1861, thousands of young
Mississippians who afterward bled for the cause, were at home dealing
out fiery denunciations against slaveholding States which would not
secede. The same history is true of every other seceding State--States,
unlike Kentucky, already embarked in and committed to the war. It was
not because the men of these States lacked purpose--throngs of them who
stayed at home until the news of our first disasters came, then
enlisted, and fought and died with the quenchless valor which had
descended to them from unconquered sires, and was traditional in a race
which had believed itself invincible. It was because they knew little of
war at all, and were utterly ignorant of the kind of war that was
coming. The mighty conviction had not yet forced itself upon them. It is
true that the Confederate Government had refused regiments raised and
tendered by these States some time previously. Unable to arm them, it
dismissed them, instead of placing them in camps of instruction until
arms could be procured.

If, among the many errors which have been attributed to the great
patriot, hero and statesman who was at the head of that Government,
there was one really grave and fatal in its consequences, it was that he
himself failed to appreciate the danger, failed to comprehend the
magnitude of the struggle when it began, and failed therefore to arouse
his people to an early and tremendous exertion, which might have
triumph