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 I20 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS

he says, in the spring of 1864, he will stake his profes- sional reputation that Grant will be crushed and Rich- mond delivered. Apparently there are to-day people who think that because he was confident, therefore he was right.

In short, even during the war, this ** driveling on possi- bilities" approached a mania. But after the war the re- sults of it were, indeed, deplorable. For the man was by nature kindly, self-sacrificing, patriotic. But his dreams had become realities to him to such an extent that those who had followed their own judgment instead of his grew to seem public enemies, traitors, who had sacrificed a great cause to a personal spite.

A careful study of many of these great soldiers — Johnston, Longstreet, Beauregard, and Northern generals also — leads one to feel that much of the pitiable post- belluin discussion, quarreling, and controversy was simply an outlet for nervous wear and tear, a brooding over what might have been — coming to seem what ought to have been — as a consolation for defeat, humiliation, and failure. Beauregard's case is the most curious of these. He lived in an atmosphere of dreams unrealized, of marvelous things that General Beauregard would have done, if only the thoughtless world would have stood by admiring and watched him do them. It was, after a fashion, a use- ful anodyne for hopes ruined and a great cause lost. Yet it seems to me that I should prefer the laureled grave of Stuart or the last heroic sacrifice of Sidney Johnston.

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