"Now this is the case here just now. Two thirds of the physical and material force of the country are at the North, and on this account _military_ success, other things being equal, must be on the side of the North. Courage, justness of the cause, right, have nothing to do with it. War in our days is a game of chess. Two players being equal, if one begins the game with dispensing with a third of his best pieces, the other wins as a matter of course." He was firmly of the opinion that England and other European nations had fomented, if they had not originated, the bad feeling between the North and the South, and at times he gave way to the most gloomy forebodings, as in a letter of July 23, 1862, to Mr. Kendall, who shared his views on the main questions at issue:-- "I am much depressed. There is no light in the political skies. Rabid abolitionism, with its intense, infernal hate, intensified by the same hate from secession quarters, is fast gaining the ascendancy. Our country is dead. God only can resuscitate it from its tomb. I see no hope of union. We are two countries, and, what is most deplorable, two hostile countries. Oh! how the nations, with England at their head, crow over us. It is the hour of her triumph; she has conquered by her arts that which she failed to do by her arms. If there was a corner of the world where I could hide myself, and I could consult the welfare of my family, I would sacrifice all my interests here and go at once. May God save us with his salvation. I have no heart to write or to do anything. Without a country! Without a country!" He went even further, in one respect, in a letter to Mr. Walker, of Utica, of October 27, but his ordinarily keen prophetic vision was at fault: "Have you made up your mind to be under a future monarch, English or French, or some scion of a European stock of kings? I shall not live to see it, I hope, but you may and your children will. I leave you this prophecy in black and white." In spite of his occasional fits of pessimism he still strove with all his might, by letters and published pamphlets, to rescue his beloved country from what he believed were the machinations of foreign enemies. At the same time he did not neglect his more immediate concerns, and his letter-books are filled with loving admonitions to his children, instructions to his farmer, answers to inventors seeking his advice, or to those asking for money for various causes, etc. He and his two brothers had united in causing a monument to be erected to the memory of their father and mother in the cemetery at New Haven, and he insisted on bearing the lion's share of the expense, as we learn from a letter written to his nephew, Sidney E. Morse, Jr., on October 10, 1862:-- "Above you have my check on Broadway Bank, New York, for five hundred dollars towards Mr. Ritter's bill.