596 The Fall of the Confederacy. 
tell us that they deplored, but could not prevent the un- 
timely revolution, and they might assert that the war, whe- 
ther precipitate or not, was forced upon them. But however 
that may be, their subsequent responsibility is not to be 
gainsayed. When the conflict began, when it went on, 
homes being desolated and men slain, the Confederate 
administration would have been guilty of a crime of un- 
precedented atrocity if they had not felt convinced that 
their ultimate triumph was, according to human judgment, 
certain. Surely no one will be so cruelly unjust to the 
Confederate administration as to suppose that they satu- 
rated a continent with human blood on what they deemed 
a doubtful issue. On the other hand, no one will dare to 
assert that the Southern people failed the administration. 
What then were the causes of failure? What were the 
bases of the hope of success? Were those bases inherently 
weak, or were they destroyed by a weak, and it may be, a 
perverse policy ? 
The contingencies on which the Confederate administra- 
a relied for success were— 
. The North giving up the struggle. 
Disunion in the North. 
3. Foreign intervention. 
If the combatants were to be let alone, and were to go on 
until the exhaustion of one of them, the triumph of the 
North, of the power with greater numbers and resources, was 
indubitable. Was it likely that the North would give in? 
There is no example in history of a people relinquishing em- 
pire until reduced to the last extremity. Spain and England 
clung passionately to their American colonies. Had it not 
been for the European complication England would have 
persisted for a longer time in the almost ruinous struggle. 
Spain was in a condition of enervation, yet she fought for 
her American possessions with pertinacity. If England 
and Spain contended so resolutely for colonies, for distant 
dependencies, was it likely that the North would be less 
resolute in fighting for the retention of territory separated 
from her by rivers, not by an ocean, and that was geo- 
graphically a part of her country, even as England and 
Wales constitute one country ? The South does not geo- 
graphically bear the same relation to the North that Ireland 
does to Great Britain, but the nearer relation that Scotland 
does to the rest of the Island. It was not merely impro- 
bable, it was, according to experience, impossible that the 
North would give in, and consent to the loss of the South 
