Enough has now been said, perhaps, in relation to the causes of the present war. The present stage of its development is such as might have been fairly anticipated from such a commencement. The South has had the advantage of earnestness and concentration of purpose; of a warlike and aggressive spirit; of prior preparation, and of a full knowledge from the first of the desperate nature of the enterprise upon which they were about to enter, with a readiness to meet all its contingencies, and, since the great uprising, with no anticipation of easy work. The North was hurried into a war for which it had no preparation, to which it had never looked as a serious probability, and for which it had been stripped in a great measure, through the pilfering policy of the South, of the ordinary means at its command. A peaceable and highly civilized people, among whom actual war upon its own soil had been unknown for nearly fifty years, and among whom the spirit of war, always so rife at the South, was opposed and neutralized by a thousand industrial and peaceful propensities, was suddenly called into the field. Uninstructed at first in the real nature of the conflict, regarding it as an unreasonable disaffection, and therefore necessarily limited in extent, not aroused even yet to a full consciousness of the momentous consequences involved in the struggle and its gigantic proportions, they have come to the work, in a great measure, unprepared. Their condition at its commencement was even less favorable than that of the British nation at the commencement of the Russian war. Both of these great industrial peoples, with whom war had fallen among the traditions of the past, had to begin new struggles by learning anew the theory and practice of war. The Northern people rose, after the assault on Fort Sumter demonstrated to them that the South was in earnest, with the unanimity and power as of a single man, but bewildered and uncertain which way to turn, or how to grapple with the strange and unaccountable monster of rebellion which had suddenly precipitated himself among them. The whole habits of the nation had to undergo a violent and rapid change. A new educational experience had to be hurried through its successive courses of instruction. The gristle on the bone of the new military organization had to have time to harden. Sharp experiences had to be undergone, and will still have to be endured, as part of the price of tuition in the novel career to which we have been so unexpectedly called. Still, we have great power in reserve; no feeling of discouragement, no thought of abandoning the purpose of maintaining our integrity as a people, no sense of weakness possesses our minds. Great and triumphant successes are attending our arms. State after State, swept at first wholly or in part into the vortex of revolt, is again included within our military lines and brought back to a partial allegiance. New questions are rising into importance. We pass from the