Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[127] Gregory concluded with the strong conviction that the interests of France and England were identical in the American question, and that “the recognition by these two great Powers of the Southern Confederacy would cause the war party in the North to pause before plunging their countrymen deeper into the sad struggle.”

The idea promulgated at Washington of a ninety days commotion was readily taken up by the Northern press, and was made the occasion of a volume of conceit, that was amusing enough in the light of subsequent events. Not a paper of influence in the North appeared to comprehend the importance of the impending contest; and the commentary of rant, passion, and bombast upon it exceeded all known exhibitions of the insane vanity of the Northern people.

“The rebellion” was derided in a style which taxed language for expressions of contempt. The New York Tribune declared that it was nothing “more or less than the natural recourse of all mean-spirited and defeated tyrannies to rule or ruin, making, of course, a wide distinction between the will and power, for the hanging of traitours is sure to begin before one month is over.” “The nations of Europe,” it continued, “may rest assured that Jeff. Davis & Co. will be swinging from the battlements at Washington, at least, by the 4th of July. We spit upon a later and longer deferred justice.”

The New York Times gave its opinion in the following vigorous and confident spirit: “Let us make quick work. The ‘ rebellion,’ as some people designate it, is an unborn tadpole. Let us not fall into the delusion, noted by Hallam, of mistaking a ‘ local commotion ’ for a revolution. A strong active ‘ pull together’ will do our work effectually in thirty days. We have only to send a column of twenty-five thousand men across the Potomac to Richmond, and burn out the rats there; another column of twenty-five thousand to Cairo, seizing the cotton ports of the Mississippi; and retaining the remaining twenty-five thousand, included in Mr. Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand men, at Washington, not because there is need for them there, but because we do not require their services elsewhere.”

The Philadelphia Press declared that “no man of sense could, for a moment, doubt that this much ado-about-nothing would end in a month.” The Northern people were “simply invincible.” “The rebels,” it prophesied, “a mere band of ragamuffins, will fly, like chaff before the wind, on our approach.”

The West was as violent as the North or East, quite as confident, and valorous to excess. The Chicago Tribune insisted on its demand that the West be allowed to fight the battle through, since she was probably the most interested in the suppression of the rebellion and the free navigation of the Mississippi. “Let the East,” demanded this valorous sheet, “get ”