Lincoln indeed had acted as any prudent civilian Minister would then have acted. But disaster followed, or rather there followed, with brief interruption, a succession of disasters which, after this long tale of hesitation, can be quickly told. It would be easy to represent them as a judgment upon the Administration which had rejected the guidance of McClellan. But in the true perspective of the war, the point which has now been reached marks the final election by the North of the policy by which it won the war. McClellan, even if he had taken Richmond while Washington remained safe, would have concentrated the efforts of the North upon a line of advance which gave little promise of finally reducing the Confederacy. It is evident to-day that the right course for the North was to keep the threatening of Richmond and the recurrent hammering at the Southern forces on that front duly related to that continual process by which the vitals of the Southern country were being eaten into from the west. This policy, it has been seen, was present to Lincoln's mind from an early day; the temptation to depart from it was now once for all rejected. On the other hand, the three great Southern victories, the second battle of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, which followed within the next nine months, had no lasting influence. Jefferson Davis might perhaps have done well if he had neglected all else and massed every man he could gather to pursue the advantage which these battles gave him. He did not--perhaps could not--do this. But he concentrated his greatest resource of all, the genius of Lee, upon a point at which the real danger did not lie.