Back of all this, in the logic of the struggle, is the fact that no defensive attitude can be maintained permanently. The belligerent that cannot prevent his own territory from becoming the seat of war must ultimately surrender his cause, no matter how valiant his individual soldiers may be, or how costly he may make it for the invader; or, to state it affirmatively, a belligerent that can carry the war into the enemy's country, and keep it there, will ultimately succeed. In most wars, the side on whose soil the battles were fought has been the losing side; and this is an important lesson to bear in mind when it becomes necessary to determine the great moral question of responsibility for prolonging a hopeless contest. CHAPTER XII. MINOR ENGAGEMENTS OF THE FIRST YEAR. LARGE NUMBER OF BATTLES FOUGHT DURING THE WAR--DISASTER AT BALL'S BLUFF ON THE POTOMAC--SMALL ENGAGEMENTS AT EDWARDS FERRY, VA.--BATTLES AT FALLING WATERS AND BUNKER HILL, VA.--BATTLE AT HARPER'S FERRY--GALLANT BAYONET CHARGE AT DRANESVILLE, VA.--OPERATIONS IN WEST VIRGINIA UNDER GENERAL McCLELLAN--BATTLES AT ROMNEY AND BARBOURSVILLE--EFFORTS TO INDUCE KENTUCKY TO SECEDE--CAMP WILD CAT--ENGAGEMENTS AT HODGESVILLE AND MUNFORDVILLE AND SACRAMENTO--REASONS WHY MISSOURI DID NOT SECEDE--ENGAGEMENTS AT CHARLESTON, LEXINGTON, AND OTHER PLACES IN THAT STATE--A BRILLIANT CHARGE BY GENERAL FRÉMONT'S BODY GUARD UNDER ZAGONYI--INDIVIDUAL HEROISM--BATTLE OF BELMONT--VAST EXTENT OF TERRITORY COVERED BY WAR OPERATIONS. The enormous number of engagements in the civil war, the extent of country over which they were spread, and the magnitude of many of them, have sunk into comparative insignificance many that otherwise would have become historic. The action at Lexington, Mass., in 1775, was nothing whatever in comparison with any one of the several actions at Lexington, Mo., in 1861; yet every schoolboy is familiarized with the one, and many well-read people have scarcely heard of the other. The casualties in the battle of Harlem Heights, N. Y., numbered almost exactly the same as those in the battle of Bolivar Heights, Va.; but no historian of the Revolution would fail to give a full account of the former, while one might read a very fair history of the civil war and find no mention whatever of the latter. In the writing of any history that is not a mere chronicle, it is necessary to observe proportion and perspective; but we may turn aside a little from the main course of our narrative, to recall some of the forgotten actions, in obscure hamlets and at the crossings of sylvan streams, where for a few men and those who were dear to them the call of duty was as stern and the realities of war as relentless as for the thousands at Gettysburg or Chickamauga. [Illustration: DELIVERING DAILY PAPERS.]