Such
ignorance of the geographic importance of Vicksburg may seem like wilful
misleading of the public; but professed British military experts were
equally ignorant. Captain Chesney, Professor of Military History at
Sandhurst College, published in 1863, an analysis of American campaigns,
centering all attention on the battles in Maryland and Virginia and
reaching the conclusion that the South could resist, indefinitely, any
Northern attack[1077]. He dismissed the western campaigns as of no real
significance. W.H. Russell, now editor of the _Army and Navy Gazette_,
better understood Grant's objectives on the Mississippi but believed
Northern reconquest of the South to the point of restoration of the
Union to be impossible. If, however, newspaper comments on the success
of Southern armies were to be regarded as favourable to Roebuck's motion
for recognition, W.H. Russell was against it.
"If we could perceive the smallest prospect of awaking the
North to the truth, or of saving the South from the loss and
trials of the contest by recognition, we would vote for it
to-morrow. But next to the delusion of the North that it can
breathe the breath of life into the corpse of the murdered
Union again, is the delusion of some people in England who
imagine that by recognition we would give life to the South,
divide the nations on each side of the black and white line
for ever, and bring this war to the end.
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