Previous to the Civil War, the large slaveholders constituted as distinct an aristocracy as ever existed under any monarchy. Educated in Northern colleges and the universities of Europe, it produced a race of men who in many respects has never been surpassed by those of any country in the world. It was small, but it was the governing class of the South, in which the people, except those in the more northerly section, placed implicit confidence.

A majority of the latter were not slaveholders nor were they in sympathy with slavery, and at heart they were unfriendly to the governing class, its policies and politics—a fact which was responsible for giving to the Union from the seceded states almost as many soldiers as enlisted for the Confederacy.The educated class, of course, understood all sections of the country, but at this time it is almost impossible to understand how little the rank and file of the Southern people knew of the North, its resources and, above all, of the motives that actuated its citizens. In a word, two sections of a country separated by no natural barrier, speaking the same language and in the main living under the same laws, were to all intents and purposes as much foreigners as though a vast ocean had divided them.

Nursed upon the theories of state sovereignty, the Southern people could not at first understand how a seceding state could be coerced, and when that delusion was dispelled, their attitude was one of angry contempt. From colonial days, conditions in the South had been such as to develop courage, resourcefulness and self-reliance in the individual. The idea of coercion was to them ridiculous. Numerically inferior as they were, they felt self-sufficient. So much so, in fact, that they took no trouble to conciliate that class before referred to which, while out of sympathy with them on slavery, were held by other ties which at first inclined them rather to the South than to the North. What mattered it? Let them join the Yankees, and they would whip both. This same confidence saw in the approaching conflict a short affair, and among this people, naturally as warlike as the Romans under the republic, there grew up the widespread fear that the war would not last long enough for all to take a hand. Valorous the attitude undoubtedly was, but at the same time the spirit that gave it birth was fatal to that careful preparation which alone would have insured a chance for success.

Henry Clay Addressing the Senate on the Missouri Compromise

This spirit invaded even the Congress, where strong opposition developed to long enlistments. In fact, this body seems to have seriously believed that the volunteers would be sufficient to maintain the struggle, and while Mr. Davis saw the error and danger involved in both theories, the most that could be secured was legislation which provided for a twelve months’ enlistment. This, in all truth, was bad enough, but it is doubtful if it was so pernicious as the methods provided for fixing the rank of officers by the relative position formerly held by them in the United States army—a measure which from its inception proved a perfect Pandora’s box of discord and dissension.