nion was suspended or fluctuating; but in the main one's sympathies
conspired with one's information as to the comparative resources of the
opponents to produce a considerable degree of confidence. That battle
and some other Southern successes acted as a severe check; and
discouragement prevailed up to the time when the capture of New Orleans,
Grant's advance on the line of the Mississippi, and McClellan's "On to
Richmond" march righted the balance. Great uncertainty, however, was
still felt; and I should say that afterwards, between the repulse of
McClellan and Pope and the Battle of Gettysburg, most of the adherents
of the North were consciously "hoping against hope," and, especially at
the time of the defeat at Chancellorsville and the Northern invasion by
Lee in 1863, were almost ready to confess the case desperate.[A]
Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Port Hudson altered the face of affairs, and
revived a confidence which gradually strengthened almost into a
conviction, such as not all the vast difficulties which afterwards beset
Grant in his advance towards Richmond, nor all the nonsense of the Times
and other Southern journals about "Johnston continuing to draw Sherman
from his base," or Hood cutting him off from his communications, and
compelling him to retreat by that most singular of retreating processes,
the triumphal march through Georgia from end to end, could ever avail
substantially to becloud. Soon after the victory at Gettysburg, those
who were not blinded by their wishes or preconceptions saw ground for
thinking that the South had made its greatest efforts, and failed,--the
North sustained its worst rebuffs, and surmounted them.

2d. The party which believed in the right of the North, but which
doubted or disbelieved its sincerity, especially on the question of
Slavery, or its eventual success, or both, was of necessity very
large,--including, as it did, in a general way, all the Northern
partisans whose strength and fulness of conviction were not great enough
to enroll them in my first division. It is extremely difficult to form
an opinion, or even a guess, on the question of relative numbers; but I
have always fancied, that, could the whole nation have been polled on
the subject, the number of Northern well-wishers would have been found
sensibly to exceed that of the Southern. Generally, men of very grave,
reflective, and unprejudiced minds, students in the philosophy of
society and history, men known for th