Recurring to the early history of the Confederacy, during the brief season when Montgomery was its seat of government, and especially to its unwritten details, there seems wanting no auspicious omen to presage for it future security and renown. The cause and its leader equally challenged the enthused sympathies of a patriotic people, and all that patriotism was ready to sacrifice for the one was cheerfully confided to the other. Hopefully, almost joyously, the young Confederacy began its short-lived career. Those were the halcyon days of that cheap patriotism and ferocious valor which delights to vaunt itself beyond the sound of "war's rude alarms." Every aspect of the situation appears tinged with the _couleur de rose_. In fancied security of certain independence, achieved without the harsh resort of arms, demagogues boasted that they courted a trial of strength with the North, as an opportunity for the display of Southern prowess. Men who subsequently were noted for unscrupulous assaults upon the Confederate administration, and, since the war, for their ready prostration before the Northern juggernaut, were then loud in "never surrender" proclamations of eternal separation from the North. Such was not an appropriate season for expressing grave and painful doubts of the President's fitness for his high trust. No whisper was then heard of his want of appreciation of his situation. There was no intimation then that he failed to discern the future, or refused to provide against the perils that menaced the Confederacy, and were so obvious to more sagacious minds. Sensational newspaper correspondents, professing to base their accounts upon reliable hints from the executive quarter, were profuse in their panegyrics upon his indefatigable industry, his vigilance, penetration, and marvelous intuition of Yankee designs. They vied with each other in telling the world, especially the North, of the stupendous preparations which the Government was making in anticipation of a possible attempt at coercion by the Lincoln government. It was evident, from the outgivings of every source of opinion, that the Confederates trusting much to the merits of their cause and their own valor, yet largely depended for the successful issue of their assertion of independence upon the soldier-statesman, who, charged with many public duties, had never proven either unwilling or incapable in any trust. The time for censure was not yet at hand. Incompetent generals and recreant politicians were not yet in want of a scape-goat upon which to throw their own delinquencies. Harsh and censorious criticism was reserved for a more opportune period, when the Confederacy, like a wearied gladiator, whose spirit was invincible, reeled under the exhaustion of a dozen successive combats, with as many fresh adversaries.