Grant was at the opening of his career put in a place which taught him the importance of gunboats, and held there until his skill in using them had given him resistless prestige. Beauregard's failure to make use of the daylight remaining after the fall of Albert S. Johnston seems to have been prompted by the powers who had the future conqueror in charge. Had he been sent against Lee in 1862 or 1863 he would hardly have done better than McClellan, Burnside, or Hooker. Compare how the powers in charge of the Roman empire prevented a too early encounter of Scipio with Hannibal. Ordinary conduct ought to have captured McClellan instead of driving him to the James. The tone of McClellan's boasting over the flank movement by which he successfully marched across the entire front of Lee's army within cannon shot is really that of a man who feels that he has miraculously escaped an unshunnable peril. The directors sent Stuart astray and hypnotized Lee into believing that Gettysburg was to be another Chancellorsville. They blinded Davis to the merits of Forrest. Especially to be thought of here is the rejected proposal of the latter to recover the Mississippi shortly after the fall of Vicksburg. I need not go further. The student of the brothers' war can add to the foregoing many other favors shown the union cause by the powers in the unseen. Of course we of the south stood by our side, fighting to the last against increasing odds with the resoluteness of hereditary freemen. In spite of all their potency the powers were often hard pressed by Lee, Jackson, Forrest, and the incomparable valor of the confederate soldiers. These should have some such eternizing epitaph as this: "For four years they kept the fates banded against them uneasy." The parallelism of the fall of the confederacy to that of Troy has incalculably deepened the interest I take in Vergil's great description. Especially of late years do I realize more vividly how his goddess mother removed the cloud darkening his vision, and gave Æneas to see Neptune, Juno, and Pallas busy in the destruction of the burning city; and a lurid illumination falls upon the statement, "Apparent diræ facies inimicaque Troiæ Numina magna deum."[120] CHAPTER XIII JEFFERSON DAVIS