Last Days of the A ////// <>f Northern F//y//y//V/. 99
Seven Years War against nearly all Europe. Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar in ancient days taught that numbers did not necessarily win battles.
The thought ignores Providence, and forgets the influences of moral forces in the work of war. All history sustains the. profound philosopher, who declared that other maxim. " In war the moral is to the physical as three to one," and that maxim fights for the in- vaded against the invader.
The history of Western Europe did not allow the conclusion that it would respect the thin blockade which prevented the exchange of our great products in the markets of the world, and kept from us money, supplies and munitions which could not be had at home.
There was reasonable hope, if the contest long continued, that the interests and rivalries of the outside world would raise up allies for us, as in the Revolution of our fathers.*
History taught that critical periods always arise in such a struggle, when military disaster or great sacrifice paralyze a representative government in carrying on a long war of invasion, f
- The seizure of Mason and Slidell from an English vessel on the high
seas, and the irritations and complications growing out of the French occu- pation of Mexico, came near involving the United States in conflict with those powers. The thin, almost "paper" blockades, maintained for a time on parts of the Southern coast, afforded constant provocations of trouble with the outside world, and so also of questions with foreign powers, which recognized the Confederate States as "belligerents," as to allowing our privateers to remain in their ports, the sale of the ships, munitions of war, &c., &c., as where the Wachusetts attacked and captured the privateer Florida in the Brazilian port of Bahia.
fSuch crises more than once threatened to bring invasion to a halt, during the last two years of the war.
In 1863 there was intense opposition to the draft and the methods of President Lincoln's administratiop, both in the East and in the West. The terrible draft riots in New York city occurred while Meade was yet about Gettysburg. Had he been defeated there, the Government would have been compelled to call back its invading columns to enable it to maintain itself at home and save its capital. Such a result, a practical defensive, in the third year of the war, would have so greatly impaired, if not destroyed, the credit of the Government, and so strengthened the opposition at home, that it would have been impossible to fill the depleted armies, or success- fully prosecute further invasion.
Another still more critical period arose in the latter part of the summer
