North. Thus, as regards her own objective, she began with hopes
that the Northern peace party never quite let die.

Then, so far as her patriotic feelings were concerned, the South
was not fighting for any one point at issue--not even for
slavery, because only a small minority held slaves--but for her
whole way of life, which, rightly or wrongly, she wanted to live
in her own Southern way; and she passionately resented the
invasion of her soil. This gave her army a very high morale,
which, in its turn, inclined her soldiers the better to
appreciate their real or imagined advantages over the Northern
hosts. First, they and their enemies both knew that they enjoyed
the three real advantages of fighting at home under magnificent
leaders and with interior lines. Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson
stood head and shoulders above any Northern leaders till Grant
and Sherman rose to greatness during the latter half of the war.
Lee himself was never surpassed; and he, like Jackson and several
more, made the best use of home surroundings and of interior
lines. Anybody can appreciate the prime advantage of interior
lines by imagining two armies of equal strength operating against
each other under perfectly equal conditions except that one has
to move round the circumference of a circle while the other moves
to meet it along the shorter lines inside. The army moving round
the circumference is said to be operating on exterior lines,
while the army moving from point to point of the circumference by
the straighter, and therefore shorter, lines inside is said to be
operating on interior lines. In more homely language the straight
road beats the crooked one. In plain slang, it's best to have the
inside track.