478 The Fall of the Confederacy. 
and that foreign powers would intervene. We must, how- 
ever, allow that the Confederate administration had some 
expectation of contingencies that would redress the dis- 
parity of numbers and resources. They were sensible 
that superior numbers would, if not met with counteracting 
forces, succeed. We have to inquire how the expectation 
of success was so frustrated, that in less than four years the 
Confederaey died. One conclusion we are confident will 
be arrived at by all impartial inquirers. It is that the 
immediate cause of the fall of the Confederacy was not the 
superior numbers of the North. 
And here let us hasten to do justice to the Southern 
people. Who will be so grievously unfair as to blame 
them for the fall of the Confederacy? Were they half- 
hearted? Did they fail the Confederate administration ? 
Did they shrink from the sacrifice of life and property ? 
Those who are now their fellow-citizens, and who then 
stood against them as enemies, will not utter so foul an 
aspersion. No people ever endured greater toils and priva- 
tions than the people of the South. Pinched by famine, 
oppressed with defeat, they fought on bravely. Nay, when 
they saw that the cause was lost, they still obeyed the 
voice of the Confederate administration, and went forth 
without murmuring, to fight like heroes, and to die like 
martyrs. They maintained a bold defiant attitude when 
death, want, and disease had so thinned their ranks that 
between the Confederacy and destruction was but one faint 
line of veterans. No, it was not the people of the South 
that failed the Confederacy. It was the policy of the Con- 
federate administration that ensured and hastened its 
doom. As we shall presently notice, the Confederacy was 
born before the revolution, and it survived the revolution. 
It was a generous sentiment of loyalty that prevented the 
South from ending the struggle in 1864. No sooner did 
Lee sheathe his sword, than the whole people bowed to the 
decision, and gave up all resistance. This would not have 
happened if the Confederacy had continued to represent a 
revolution. But the Confederate administration, which in 
1861 had invoked a revolution to support the Confederacy, 
had by its policy killed the revolution at least a year before 
the Confederacy fell. 
Likely enough there will be a sneer at this bill of in- 
dictment against the Confederate administration, on the 
ground that it is easy to be wise after the event. Doubt- 
less the story of the Confederacy should teach us a lesson 
