Having won the completest and most conspicuous victory of modern times, they set to work to fortify themselves for defense against the enemy they had so disastrously overthrown, precisely as if they had been beaten in the fight and were called upon to defend themselves against further aggression at the hands of an enemy to be feared. Having everything of opportunity their own way, they threw it all into the adversary's hands. Having reduced their enemy's army to pulp they deliberately gave him time and opportunity to reconstruct it, to reinforce it, to reorganize and discipline it, as he presently did, into a superb fighting machine instead of pushing forward and fighting it vigorously while it possessed no fighting force at all. Both sides in this war suffered for a time from this paralysis of officialism and routine which set inferior men to command their superiors and balked conclusions by incapacity. It will be related later in this history, how Grant--the most masterful man in the Federal army--was long denied his opportunity by the arbitrary will of the immeasurably inferior Halleck, to whom a false system and an old man's favor gave control in despite of fact and achievement. At present we deal only with the facts of a single case. On the night of July 21, 1861, and on the following morning, there was open to the Confederate commanders at Manassas an opportunity which hopefully promised to bring the war to an immediate end. They utterly failed to embrace that opportunity and the price paid for their neglect was four years of bloody conflict, involving the loss of lives by scores of thousands and the infliction of incalculable suffering upon the American people. At several other points in the history of the struggle like opportunities presented themselves, less conspicuously indeed but none the less positively, to one side or the other. In many cases they were similarly neglected, and the war went on with all its horrors. But if we wonder at the failure of the Confederates to follow up their victory on the evening of its achievement and on the days immediately following, how much greater must be our astonishment at their failure to take the initiative during the long months of inaction that followed it, or to make any effort to direct the further progress of a war upon the success of which their very existence depended!