-a paper which had
"gone in for" the South with a vehemence only balanced by its virulence
against the North,--found it convenient to turn tail, and retort upon
those opponents with whom the laugh remained at last. The Saturday
Review bleated pitifully, yet unconfessingly, to this effect:--"True it
is that we have been backing up the South all the while; but we meant no
more by it than the backer of any prize-fighter or any race-horse means,
when he has made his choice, and staked his money, and shouts to adopted
competitor, 'Go in and win!' That backer does not necessarily believe
that his side _will_ be the winner, but only signalizes that that side
is his." The evasion came too late; persons who had inconvenient
memories saw through the shuffling of a pseudo-prophet, who only managed
to cast a retrospective gleam of insincerity over his fortune-telling,
to convert blunder into bad faith, and to stultify his present along
with his past position. The leek had to be eaten at last: why, after so
many "prave 'ords" of superiority and defiance, confess that the eating
of it had been more than half foreseen all along?

6th. The party which believed in the eventual success of the South, but
doubted or disbelieved its right, must have been pretty considerable, if
my previous estimates are true; for I have already advanced the
conjecture that more than half the nation sided with the North, while
four fifths believed for a long time in the success of the South. This
fact alone, if correctly alleged, furnishes tolerable evidence of the
persistency and influence of pro-Southern papers and partisans, and
their ingenuity in so misreading the facts,

"Che il no e il si nel capo ci tenzona."

The event has proved that the chances of success were really very much
on the side of the North. The superiority in material resources, and
certain solid and undeniable successes obtained at and early stage of
the war, such as the capture of New Orleans, were known to be on the
same side. Slighter grounds would in most cases have sufficed to
persuade minds predisposed by sympathy that this side would win; yet the
Southern advocates shuffled and played the cards well enough to induce
an opposite conclusion in numerous instances. And no doubt many who
began by simply believing that the South would succeed went on to think
that the North deserved to lose,--partly because, upon such an
assumption, the personal superiority must have been very l