These things are perhaps tedious to the reader. But their just consideration is absolutely necessary to any really impartial inquiry into the history of the war, such as this work is intended to be. CHAPTER XIII "PEPPER BOX" STRATEGY The moment Virginia adopted an ordinance of secession the authorities on both sides recognized the fact that that state was destined to be the chief battle ground of the war, and especially that the first and perhaps the decisive actions of the struggle were likely to occur there. Accordingly both sides began at once to hurry troops to that borderland--the South sending them to such vantage points in Virginia as might most seriously threaten Washington, the North sending them to the capital city for its defense and for that march upon Richmond which, it was hoped at the North, might be quickly decisive of the war in favor of the Federal arms. The Confederate General Forrest is reported to have defined "strategy" as the art of "getting there first with the most men." This was what each side at that time was endeavoring to do. Richmond was not yet selected as the Confederate capital, but its choice as such was already foreshadowed as a necessary requirement alike of geography and politics, and within a brief while the foreshadowing became a fact. In the meanwhile it was accepted in advance as a certainty, and the two capitals confronted each other at a distance of scarcely more than a hundred miles, as the crow flies. The Southern States poured troops into Richmond as rapidly as they could. The Northern States poured troops into Washington for the defense of that capital with all possible energy and enterprise. Neither upon the one side nor upon the other were the men soldiers in any proper acceptation of the term. They were raw levies. From the North they were mainly men who had passed their young lives in commerce, in study or in other peaceful pursuits. From the South they were mainly the sons of planters or the sons of overseers, accustomed in either case from their youth up to the use of gunpowder, and to the employment of those arms in the use of which gunpowder is a prime factor. The Southern youths were accustomed to outdoor life, to camp fare, to self-dependence, to self-sacrifice, if need be. The Northern youth in the main were accustomed to nothing of the sort.