No very acute analysis is required to penetrate the motives of this distribution of forces in the face of the plain necessities of the situation. Yet a vast amount of conceit has been expended in glittering verbiage, aiming to exhibit the early partiality of President Davis for the weak policy of dispersion, and that aversion to the "concentration" of troops, for overwhelming victories, to be followed by decisive results, which, it is alleged, adhered to his military policy to the last. To this cant about "concentration," a sufficient answer relative to this disposition of troops is, that it has the sanction of Lee's great name, to say nothing of the complete success that followed it. There was no phase of the situation, either then or for months afterward, which could have justified for any result, then attainable by "concentration," the surrendering to the enemy of vast sections of country, which, then and subsequently, fed the army and supplied thousands of soldiers. Popular confidence, so indispensable to a government under such circumstances, was not to be won by such a policy, at the very incipiency of the contest. Were the patriots of Western Virginia, thousands of whom made heroic sacrifices, to be abandoned without an effort for their rescue? Magruder and Huger, too, had duties of no insignificant character to perform. Fortress Monroe, commanding the tributaries of the Chesapeake--the avenues leading to the very heart of Virginia, to the doors of Richmond, and the rear of the armies upon the northern borders--presented, during the entire war, an insuperable difficulty in the defense of Virginia. More than once it was the impregnable asylum for discomfited Federal hosts; and as a base of operations for the enemy, there was no period of the war when it did not challenge a vigilant observation from Richmond. To the efficient, bold, and skillful defense of the peninsula, by Magruder, the Confederate capital owed its safety for twelve months, not less than to the successful defense made upon the Potomac border. Dependent upon the command of Huger was the defense, not only of Norfolk and Portsmouth, but of an extensive back country, besides the naval defenses then in preparation at Gosport.