So the work went on, quietly but surely, the general supported by the President, and the nation giving men and money without remonstrance.  The South, on the other hand, was still apathetic.  The people, deluded by their decisive victory, underrated the latent strength of their mighty adversary.  They appear to have believed that the earthworks which had transformed Centreville into a formidable fortress, manned by the Army of Northern Virginia, as the force under Johnston was now designated, were sufficient in themselves to end the war.  They had not yet learned that there were many roads to Richmond, and that a passive defence is no safeguard against a persevering foe.  The Government, expecting much from the intervention of the European Powers, did nothing to press the advantage already gained.  In vain the generals urged the President to reinforce the army at Centreville to 60,000 men, and to give it transport and supplies sufficient to permit the passage of the Potomac above Washington.

In vain they pointed out, in answer to the reply that the Government could furnish neither men nor arms, that large bodies of troops were retained at points the occupation of which by the enemy would cause only a local inconvenience.  “Was it not possible,” they asked the President, “by stripping other points to the last they would bear, and even risking defeat at all other places, to put the Virginian army in condition for a forward movement?  Success,” they said, “in the neighbourhood of Washington was success everywhere, and it was upon the north-eastern frontier that all the available force of the Confederacy should be concentrated.”

Mr. Davis was immovable.  Although Lee, who had been appointed to a command in West Virginia almost immediately after Bull Run, was no longer at hand to advise him, he probably saw the strategical requirements of the situation.  That a concentrated attack on a vital point is a better measure of security than dissemination along a frontier, that the counter-stroke is the soul of the defence, and that the true policy of the State which is compelled to take up arms against a superior foe is to allow that foe no breathing-space, are truisms which it would be an insult to his ability to say that he did not realise.  But to have surrendered territory to the temporary occupation of the enemy, in order to seek a problematical victory elsewhere, would have probably provoked a storm of discontent.  The authority of the new Government was not yet firmly established; nor was the patriotism of the Southern people so entirely unselfish as to render them willing to endure minor evils in order to achieve a great result.  They were willing to fight, but they were unwilling that their own States should be left unprotected.  To apply Frederick the Great’s maxim* requires greater strength of will in the statesman than in the soldier. (* “A defensive war is apt to betray us into too frequent detachments.  Those generals