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.

“ [128] out of the way; this is a war of the West. We can fight the battle, and successfully, within two or three months at the furthest. Illinois can whip the South by herself. We insist on the matter being turned over to us.”

It is no wonder that, with the prospect of a short war extended from Washington and enlivened by pictures of cheap glory in the newspapers, the rage for volunteering in the North should have been immense. Going to the war “for three months” (the term of the enlistment of volunteers) was looked upon as a sort of holiday excursion, and had peculiar attractions for the firemen, the rowdies, and “roughs” of the Northern cities, from which brutal material it was boasted that the North would gather the most terrible and invincible army that ever enacted deeds of war. Many of these men adopted the Zouave costume to add to the terrours of their appearance; and a company of them actually went through the ceremony of being sworn in a public hotel in New York to “cut off the heads of every d-d Secessionist in the war.” Such exhibitions of brutal ferocity were told with glee and devoured with unnatural satisfaction by the Northern people. If the rowdies were in constant scenes of disorder and violence before they were marched away — if Ellsworth's and Billy Wilson's men did knock down quiet citizens and plunder stores in New York and Washington, the story was merrily told even in the communities where these outrages were committed; for these displays were taken as proofs of desperate courage, and the men so troublesome and belligerent towards quiet citizens were indicated as the terrible and ruthless crusaders who were to strike terrour to the simple armies of the South, and win the brightest and bloodiest laurels on the field of battle.

But it was not only the vagrant and unruly classes of the great and vicious cities of the North that flocked to the standards of the war. The most quiet citizens could not resist the temptation of entering a race for cheap glory. The North was full of martial rage. The war spirit pervaded not only the holiday volunteer soldiers of the cities, but the country people, the shoemakers and cobblers of New England and the coal-heavers of Pennsylvania. Governor Dennison, of Ohio, telegraphed to Washington, offering thirty thousand troops. Governor Weston, of Indiana, received offers showing that the same numbers were ready to come forward in his State. Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, was equally liberal in his assurances to Washington. Massachusetts and New York were pressing with offers of men and money for “the three months war.”

But while the North was making such insolent and giddy exhibitions on the threshold of the war, it must be confessed that, on the part of the South, there was also very imperfect appreciation of the impending crisis, and of the extent and solemnity of the adventure in which the Confederate States were to embark.

In the first stages of the dispute the Southern leaders had declared that