It was not a failure to recognize these great advantages which forbade wise and reflective Southern statesmen to indulge in those grotesque exhibitions of braggadocio, with which demagogues amused excited crowds at railway stations and upon street-corners. There was an element of weakness in the South, which, looking to the contingencies of the future, and remembering the incertitude of war, might prove the source of serious danger. This was the absence of that unity in the South, to which all her statesmen had looked forward, whenever actual battle should be joined between the defenders and assailants of Southern liberties. To see a "UNITED SOUTH," had been for years the dream of Calhoun's noble intellect. Davis, with equal energy and ability, had striven for such united action by the South as would command peace and security in the Union, or independence beyond its limits. But now the battle was joined, and the dream was not to be realized. Kentucky was hopelessly divided, and though, from the overwhelming majority of her people in sympathy with the South, were to come thousands of gallant soldiers, the Confederacy was to be denied the powerful aid which the brave heart and mighty resources of united Kentucky should have thrown into the scale. Missouri, in consequence of her geographical position, peculiarly assailable by the North-western States, and by divisions among her population, was similarly situated; while Maryland, a gallant and patriotic State, not less than South Carolina devoted to the independence of the South, was securely shackled at the first demonstration, by her people, of sympathy with their invaded countrymen. But not only was there a failure to realize united action by those States, which, by geographical contiguity, no less than by identity of political institutions, constituted what was designated as THE SOUTH. There was by no means a thoroughly harmonious sentiment among the people of those States which had joined the Southern alliance. This was conspicuously the case in Western Virginia and Eastern Tennessee.[30] Though apparently insignificant in the midst of the general enthusiasm which prevailed in the early months of the war, these and other instances of local disaffection were to prove, at more than one critical period, fruitful of embarrassment. Intelligence of Confederate disasters was always the signal for exhibitions of that covert disloyalty which Confederate success compelled to concealment. Always ready to assist the invaders of their country, the so-called "Union men" of the South were valuable auxiliaries to the Federal armies as spies, and as secret enemies to the cause of the patriots; but they were not more hurtful and insidious in these capacities than as the nucleus around which crystallized, under the direction of disappointed demagogues, the various elements of discontent which were subsequently developed.