When peace was formally declared impossible, the women of both sections found congenial vent for the enthusiasm which had been so fatal to the efforts of the peacemakers. Each side firmly believed its cause pure and right, without the shadow of doubt being possible, and each acted from the depths of a conviction which was as much the child of education as of environing circumstances. All over the country there was enthusiasm which hardly stopped short of gala merriment. The younger women of both sides embroidered banners for their pet regiments and with their own fair hands gave those banners into the keeping of their knights, who swore--they did not know the difficulties of the task--to bring back those flags unsullied by defeat. The men were eager enough to meet the hardships and perils which they had not yet measured; but the women surpassed even the masculine eagerness, hurrying their sons and lovers and brothers and often husbands to the front, hardly finding time for tears in their enthusiasm and patriotism. For patriotism, though sometimes not easily distinguished from selfish delight in the romance which precedes war, it was on both sides--a patriotism which was to be sorely tried and never to fail. It was misdirected in most cases as yet; the social functions which made brilliant the rival capitals for a time were mistaken expressions of the deep feeling which glowed beneath; but they had their meaning and were promises of better things to come. From Maine to Texas there burned a flame of patriotism such as had not been called forth in like eagerness of display even by the days of the Revolution, and its chief expressions were from the women of the divided land. So trivial and misdirected as yet were the majority of its expressions that it might have been thought shallow and unenduring; but it was to prove its intensity and depth in other guise, and these first ebullitions were but the foam that glances on the unsounded sea. There was little fear of suffering on either side. Each believed that, so good was its cause, so valiant its supporters, it must triumph within a short space. A prominent New York journal prophesied the fall of Richmond within three months, saying: "We spit upon a longer-deferred justice." The South thought that Washington would be taken at one blow. In these beliefs, which seem to us, knowing the men who were to bear the standards of both causes, such wild folly, the women more than shared. Northern and Southern woman alike believed with full conviction that the men of her country were unconquerable and that God fought on her side of the quarrel; how then could defeat or disaster come to the cause she loved? It was impossible.