The recent war in America could not fail to create a lively interest throughout the whole civilized world, not merely on account of the immense sacrifice of human life it has caused, hut for the extraordinary energy shown by the people and the great resources yielded by the country. Armies and navies have been called into existence as if by the power of magic. These armaments, both in number and equipment, have been such as the world never before saw. From the first inauguration of the dreadful contest, the Northern people had many advantages over those of the South. If the coloured race be excepted, their population was nearly three to one; their ports were open to the commerce of the world, while those of the South were all but closed. The North, too, commenced the contest with the whole manufacturing power of the country at her command, whereas the South was simply an agricultural district. The one division of the nation was filled with an active trading and commercial community, who were competing in nearly all the markets of the world with the old-established traders and manufacturers of Europe, while the other was peopled with a race who owed all they possessed to a bountiful soil and a genial climate.

When the war first broke out, the Northern people made a series of stupid blunders, the evils of which no subsequent care could rectify. In the first place, they treated the power of their enemy as almost too insignificant upon which to spend their mighty wrath.