When President Davis held his first New-Year's reception, as the chief magistrate of the infant Confederacy, there were not wanting signs of the approaching shadows, which were to throw in temporary eclipse the brilliant foreground of the first year of the war. Richmond was then in its exultant spirit, its gayety, festivity, and show, the type of that fatal confidence in Southern invincibility, which, in a few weeks of disaster, was brought to grief and humiliation. In that numerous and brilliant assemblage, representing the various branches of the new government, civil, naval, and military, members of Congress and of State Legislatures, and admiring citizens, eager to make formal tender of their esteem to the first President of the South, there were few who discerned the omens of the coming storm, which was to shake its foundation, the power of which that occasion was an imposing symbol. Perhaps there were as few who could penetrate his assuring exterior of grace, gentleness, and dignity, and share the anxiety with which, even in the midst of popular adulation, he contemplated the approach of that stern trial for which the country was so deficient in preparation. With singular accord of opinion, writers, who had an _inside_ view of the Southern conduct of the war, have commented upon the disasters consequent upon the period of fancied security and relaxed exertions which followed the battle of Manassas. We can not share, however, the shallow and unphilosophical conclusion which pronounces the glorious triumph of Manassas a calamity to the South. The temporary salvation of the Confederacy, guaranteed by that victory, was not its only fruit. Manassas gave a stamp of _prestige_ to Southern valor and soldiership, which not even a deluge of subsequent disasters could efface. It gave an imperishable record and an undying incentive to resolution.