Whatever crudities may appear in the general plans of warfare, adopted by the American belligerents in 1861, when tested by the maxims which have obtained in other wars, waged upon different theatres of action, and for different purposes, at least there was not wanting a palpable and definitive shape. With remarkable rapidity and precision, the military situation was adjusted to the attainment of certain general objects, which continued, during the successive stages of the war, to be pursued, with varying fortune, by the respective contestants. The incipient campaign of the war was peculiarly regulated and determined by the paramount aims which had impelled the respective parties to arms. Of necessity, the campaign, on the part of the North, must be offensive, while the South, in a defensive attitude, must prepare to parry the blows of her assailant. The pretext of the North was to assert the "national authority" over what it was pleased to term "rebellious" territory. The _animus_ of the South was to repel an invasion which menaced her liberties and firesides. Whatever advantages may have belonged to the position of the South were not overlooked by those who were charged with her defense; and it may safely be claimed, in view of the immediate and overwhelming result in her favor, that whatever compensation, for obvious disadvantages, she had anticipated from the resources of skillful leadership, was fairly rendered. The two Governments, at Washington and at Richmond, were then more directly chargeable with the actual results in the field than at subsequent periods. The army had then become less independent of the Government. Its organic structure was undeveloped, and it had not yet become identified with those commanders whose history was hereafter to be so interwoven with its own. In a general sense, it may be remarked, that the connection of President Davis with all the campaigns of the Confederate army, was that which the country designed it should be, when, in consequence of his military aptitude and experience, it placed him in charge of the public administration. Moreover, it was consistent with that inevitable responsibility which attached to the office of chief executive. Ignorant and intemperate partisans have labored to prove his responsibility for those casualties of war, which are utterly beyond human calculations, and to trace to his influence disasters of the battle-field, with which he could by no possibility have been connected. As is usual in such cases, these criticisms are made with a total forgetfulness of the unintentional tribute, which is accorded to Mr. Davis, in ascribing to him the chief responsibility for a military administration, which the world declares to have had few parallels in its history.