“The process of preparation has steadily gone on in the loyal States,
while that of exhaustion has been going on in the disloyal.... We have
the most satisfactory evidence that the Union will be hailed in every
quarter just as fast as the army shall emancipate the people from the
oppression of the insurgent leaders.”
March 15—“The financial and moral, as well as the physical, elements of
the insurrection seem to be rapidly approaching exhaustion.” On 25th
March it seems impossible to the sanguine Secretary that the
organisation of the insurgents can be longer maintained. On 28th April
he asserts that “to-day the country is assuming that the fate of this
unnatural war is determined by the great event of the capture of New
Orleans.” On the 5th May the fiscal system of the insurgents must, he
calculates, have exploded, and their military connections be everywhere
broken. On 28th May the Federal Government is said to possess the
Mississippi and all the other great natural highways. And on June 2—
“The war in the Mississippi valley may be deemed virtually ended....
The army of General M‘Clellan will be rapidly strengthened, although
it is already deemed adequate to the capture of Richmond.... No
American now indulges any doubt that the integrity of the Union will
be triumphantly maintained.”