But, even from a military point of view,
those ten years had not been wasted. His mind had a wider grasp, and
his brain was more active. Striving to fit himself for such duties as
might devolve on him, should he be summoned to the field, like all
great men and all practical men he had gone to the best masters. In
the campaigns of Napoleon he had found instruction in the highest
branch of his profession, and had made his own the methods of war
which the greatest of modern soldiers both preached and practised.
Maturer years and the search for wisdom had steadied his restless
daring; and his devotion to duty, always remarkable, had become a
second nature. His health, under careful and self-imposed treatment,
had much improved, and the year 1861 found him in the prime of
physical and mental vigour. Already it had become apparent that his
life at Lexington was soon to end. The Damascus blade was not to rust
upon the shelf. During the winter of 1860-61 the probability of a
conflict between the free and slave-holding States, that is, between
North and South, had become almost a certainty. South Carolina,
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, had
formally seceded from the Union; and establishing a Provisional
Government, with Jefferson Davis as President, at Montgomery in
Alabama, had proclaimed a new Republic, under the title of the
Confederate States of America.
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