He had at the least, so the scouts said, one hundred and twenty thousand men and four hundred guns.

The North, moreover, which always commanded the water, had gunboats in the Rappahannock below Fredericksburg, and they would be, as they were throughout the war, a powerful arm.
Harry knew, too, the temper and resolution of the North, the slow, cold wrath that could not be checked by one defeat or half a dozen.
Antietam, as he saw it, had merely been a temporary check to the Confederate arms, where the forces of Lee and Jackson had fought off at least double their number.

The Northern men could not yet boast of a single clean-cut victory in the battles of the east, but they were coming on again as stern and resolute as ever.

Defeat seemed to serve only as an incentive to them.

After every one, recruits poured down from the north and west to lift anew the flag of the Union.
There was something in this steady, unyielding resolve that sent a chill through Harry.