The dominant attitude in South Carolina in the autumn of 1862 is in strong contrast, because of its firm grasp upon fact, with the attitude of the Brown faction in Georgia. An extended history of the Confederate movement--one of those vast histories that delight the recluse and scare away the man of the world--would labor to build up images of what might be called the personalities of the four States that continued from the beginning to the end parts of the effective Confederate system--Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. We are prone to forget that the Confederacy was practically divided into separate units as early as the capture of New Orleans by Farragut, but a great history of the time would have a special and thrilling story of the conduct of the detached western unit, the isolated world of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas--the "Department of the Trans-Mississippi"--cut off from the main body of the Confederacy and hemmed in between the Federal army and the deep sea. Another group of States--Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama--became so soon, and remained so long, a debatable land, on which the two armies fought, that they also had scant opportunity for genuine political life. Florida, small and exposed, was absorbed in its gallant achievement of furnishing to the armies a number of soldiers larger than its voting population. Thus, after the loss of New Orleans, one thing with another operated to confine the area of full political life to Virginia and her three neighbors to the South. And yet even among these States there was no political solidarity or unanimity of opinion, for the differences in their past experience, social structure, and economic conditions made for distinct points of view. In South Carolina, particularly, the prevailing view was that of experienced, disillusioned men who realized from the start that secession had burnt their bridges, and that now they must win the fight or change the whole current of their lives. In the midst of the extraordinary conditions of war, they never talked as if their problems were the problems of peace. Brown, on the other hand, had but one way of reasoning--if we are to call it reasoning--and, with Hannibal at the gates, talked as if the control of the situation were still in his own hands.