We have briefly indicated the causes which now elevated the Southern people to a more intelligent appreciation of the nature and necessities of the struggle in which they were engaged. There was reason for the congratulation which President Davis experienced at the unmistakable evidences of the awakening of the public mind to the stern duties which, from the beginning, he had sedulously inculcated. The progress of the war had already developed the existence of numerous errors upon both sides, and had exploded many cherished theories having possession of the popular mind of each section, with reference to the power, resources, and spirit of its antagonist. Both parties had entered into the contest with the firm conviction of certain triumph, and with the purpose to make the struggle as short as possible. The war-cry of the North was "Let it be short, sharp, and decisive;" and they appealed to their numbers, wealth, and sectional hatred, as elements of superiority, which would inevitably end the war in their favor in a few months. The South was equally disposed to a speedy conclusion. With the masses of the South and the majority of their advisers, the predominant idea and aspiration was to teach the enemy, by prompt and heavy blows, the impossibility of successful invasion, and thus shorten the period of bloodshed. Thus both, from a necessity which neither was able to avoid, began with gigantic preparations, hoping, by a few mighty conflicts of arms, and one lavish sacrifice of life and treasure, to bring to prompt arbitrament an issue which was the growth of a century. But the aroused spirit of sectional strife was not to be appeased by a single holocaust. The American people, a youthful giant, totally uneducated in the experience of war, having never yet tested their strength and dimensions, would not consent that the game of empire should be decided by a single dramatic _denouement_, a Waterloo, a Solferino, or Sadowa. Manassas had been the bitter but beneficent chastisement of the North, and the reproof was accepted with that wonderful elasticity, which afterwards amazed the world with its manifestations after the most disheartening failures. A rebuke no less signal waited upon the South, and its correcting influence immediately exhibited a temper which was the temporary salvation of the Confederacy, and the inspiration to a series of campaigns among the most memorable in the annals of warfare.