Socola found no difficulty in possessing himself of every secret of the new Government. What was not proclaimed from the street corners and shouted from the housetops, the newspapers printed in double leads. The new Government had yet to organize its secret service. The President addressed himself with energy to the task which confronted him. But seven States had yet enrolled in the Confederacy. Of four more he felt sure. The first attempt to coerce a Southern State by force of arms would close the ranks with Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas by his side. Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri were peopled by the South and the institution of Slavery bound them in a common cause. And yet the defense of these eleven Southern States with their five million white population and four million blacks was a task to stagger the imagination of the greatest statesman of any age. This vast territory would present an open front on land of more than a thousand miles without a single natural barrier. Its sea coast presented three thousand miles of water front--open to the attack of the navy. This enormous coast of undefended shore was pierced by river after river whose broad, deep waters would carry the gunboats of an enemy into the heart of the South. The audacity of our fathers in challenging the power of Great Britain was reasonable in comparison with the madness of the South's challenge to the North. Three thousand miles of storm-tossed ocean defended our Revolutionary ancestors from the base of the enemy supplies. Three thousand miles of undefended coast invited the attack of the U. S. Navy, while twenty million Northerners stood with their feet on the borders of the South ready to advance without the possibility of hindrance save the bare breasts of the men who might oppose them. The difference between the sections in material resources was absurd. The North was rich and powerful Her engines of war were exhaustless and under perfect control. The railroads of the South were few and poorly equipped, with no work shops from which to renew their equipment when exhausted. The railroad system of the entire country was absolutely dependent on the North for supplies. The Missouri River was connected with the Northern seaboard by the finest system of railways in the world, with a total mileage of over thirty thousand. Its annual tonnage was thirty-six million and its revenue valued at four thousand millions of dollars. The annual value of the manufactures of the North was over two thousand millions, and their machinery was complete for the production of all the material of war. Her ships sailed every sea and she could draw upon the resources of the known world. Her manufacturing power compared to the South was five hundred to one. No leader in the history of his race was ever confronted by such insuperable difficulties as faced Jefferson Davis.