236 
THE OPERATIONS IN VIRGINIA. 
their allegiance was due, not to the common country, but to the 
individual State. It is not my duty to enter into the complicated 
questions of constitutional policy upon which this opinion was based. 
Mr. Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, no doubt, like 
Mr. Lincoln, the Federal president, believed the quarrel just, and most 
assuredly Generals Lee, Joseph Johnson, Beauregard, and J. E. B. Stuart, 
had attained the highest strains of honour, and sacrificed their all to 
what they honestly believed their duty. Thomas Jackson’s proceedings 
became an eccentric man and a strong religious enthusiast of the 
puritan type ; he was undecided ; his father-in-law was a Federal ; a 
consultation was held ; prayer was resorted to ; the father-in-law was 
earnest and eloquent; but, when the prayers were finished, Jackson 
rose from his knees and stated that his path was clear ; he joined the 
South, carrying with him the perfervid zeal of one of Cromwell’s 
colonels and an aptitude for war and a mastery of ruses , seldom rivalled 
since the days of Hannibal. 
Here I may remark on the absolute necessity for perfect military 
organization and discipline, and a strong army with a clearly defined 
status in every country, under every form of government. A regular 
army, 50,000 strong, under the absolute control of the central govern¬ 
ment, would have nipped rebellion in the bud, and would have saved 
both South and North from four dreary years of internecine strife ; 
from an expenditure of money greater than was incurred in all the other 
wars since Waterloo, the Franco-German war included ; and from a loss 
of life without any parallel since the awful days when Napoleon left 
the grand army behind him on the vast expanse of snow from the 
Moskwa to the Beresina. 
As I was allowed to say before in this Hall, quoting the most 
profound of our lawyers and philosophers, it is the most certain oracle of 
time that no nation can expect either security from external violence, or 
any permanent immunity from internal disruption, unless it sets its 
military house in order. In 1861, the United States had not a national 
army properly so called : therefore 500,000 federal volunteers perished 
and £1,000,000,000 of Federal money were spent before the union was 
re-established in 1865. Historical lectures are a waste of time unless 
lessons, such as this, be weighed and remembered. 
We, of course, are now absolutely free from the passions which raged 
so fiercely round the international and other questions that were 
developed during this gigantic struggle, and we can look back on the 
policy of its statesmen and the strategy of its generals with impartiality 
as well as sympathy. One emotion, however, we need not control, we 
can all be proud of the heroism which both sides, equally sprung from 
our own imperial race, displayed, and of their dauntless resolution 
“never to submit or yield and, what is more, not to be overcome” 
while it was possible to fight on, and we can also, in common with 
competent critics of all countries, admire the magnificent military 
qualities displayed by the respective leaders. 
It would be most interesting to discuss the myriad modes in which 
the fertile ingenuity of our transatlantic kinsmen was displayed. Every 
variety of weapon was tried ; some of these innovations have been 
permanently adopted ; naval warfare was revolutionized by Merrimacs 
and Monitors and other strange unsightly craft ; the use of the spade ; 
the use of cavalry in raids; the destruction and repair of railways, 
which were of more vital importance in this than in other modern 
