Uncomprehended Problems

 These (logistical) problems were so grave and pointed so surely toward final defeat that one is forced to wonder how the founding fathers of the Confederacy could possibly have overlooked them. The answer perhaps is that the problems were not so much unseen as uncomprehended. At bottom, these were Yankee problems; concerns of the broker, the money changer, the trader, the mechanic, the grasping man of business; they were matters that such people would think of, not matters that would command the attention of aristocrats who were familiar with valor, the classics, and heroic attitudes. Secession itself had involved a flight from reality rather than an approach to it. ...Essentially, this was the reliance of a group which knew a little about the modern world but which did not know nearly enough and could never understand that it did not know enough. It ran precisely parallel to Mr. (Jefferson) Davis's magnificent statement that the duration of the war could be left up to the enemy - the war would go on until the enemy gave up, and it did not matter how far off that day might be.

- From The Coming Fury by Bruce Catton