fifteen millions in the North against only five in the South.

This gives the statistical key to the startling contrasts which
were so often noted by foreign correspondents at the time, and
which are still so puzzling in the absence of the key. The whole
normal life of the South was visibly changed by the war. But in
the North the inquiring foreigner could find, on one hand, the
most steadfast loyalty and heroic sacrifice, both in the Northern
armies and among their folks at home, while on the other he could
find a wholly different kind of life flaunting its most shameless
features in his face. The theaters were crowded. Profiteers
abounded, taking their pleasures with ravenous greed; for the
best of their blood-money would end with the war. Everywhere
there was the same fundamental difference between the patriots
who carried on the war and the parasites who hindered them. Of
course the two-thirds who made up the war party were not all
saints or even perfect patriots. Nor was the other third composed
exclusively of wanton sinners. There were, for instance, the
genuine settlers whom the Union Government encouraged to occupy
the West, beyond the actual reach of war. But the distinction
still remains.

Though sorely hampered, the Union Government did, on the whole,
succeed in turning the vast and varied resources of the North
against the much smaller and less varied resources of the South.
The North held the machinery of national government, though with
the loss of a good quarter of the engineers. In agriculture of,
all kinds both North and South were very strong for purposes of
peace. Each had food in superabundance. But the trading strength
of the South lay in cotton and tobacco, neither of which could be