passed away.

The Northern people then learned, for the first time, their real
strength; they found that bounties, and the draft, and the freedmen, and
importations from the recruiting markets of the whole world, would keep
their armies full, and nothing could have made them despond again. The
war then became merely a comparison of national resources. Something was
undoubtedly gained by the march into Kentucky, but how little in
comparison with the golden opportunity which was thrown away. Had the
combatants been equally matched, the result of this campaign might have
been a matter for congratulation; but when the Confederacy was
compelled, in order to cope with its formidable antagonist, to deal
mortal blows in every encounter, or come out of each one the loser, the
prisoners, artillery, and small arms taken, the recovery of Cumberland
Gap and a portion of Tennessee, and the supplies secured for the army,
scarcely repaid for the loss of prestige to Confederate generalship, and
the renewal of confidence in the war party of the North.

When Bragg moved out of Kentucky, he left behind him, uncrippled, a
Federal army which soon (having become more formidable than ever before)
bore down upon him in Tennessee. The inquest of history will cause a
verdict to be rendered, that the Confederacy "came to its death" from
too much technical science. It is singular, too, that the maxims which
were always on the lips of the military _savants_, were often neglected
by themselves and applied by the unlettered "irregulars." The academic
magnates declared in sonorous phrase that struck admiration into the
very popular marrow, the propriety of a General "marching by interior
lines, and striking the fragments of his enemy's forces with the masses
of his own;" while Forrest, perhaps, after doing that very thing, would
make it appear a very ordinary performance, by describing it as "taking
the short cut, and getting there first with the most men."

It was a great misfortune to the Confederacy, too, that Fabius ever
lived, or, at least, that his strategy ever became famous. Every
Confederate General who retreated, when he might have fought
successfully, and who failed to improve an opportunity to punish the
enemy, had only to compare his policy to that of Fabius, and criticism
was silenced. Perhaps, if history had preserved the reports of Hannibal,
the "Fabian policy" would not have become so reputable. At any rate, it
is safe to assume tha