It is a pity," he wrote to Lyons, "the Federals think it worth their while to go on with the war.

The obedience they are ever likely to obtain from the South will not be quiet or lasting, and they must spend much money and blood to get it.
If they can obtain the right bank of the Mississippi, and New Orleans, they might as well leave to the Confederates Charleston and Savannah[1159]." This was but private speculation with no intention of urging it upon the United States.

Yet it indicated a change in the view held as to the warlike _power_ of the North.

Similarly the _Quarterly Review_, long confident of Southern success and still prophesying it, was acknowledging that "the unholy [Northern] dream of universal empire" must first have passed[1160].

Throughout these spring months of 1864, Lyons continued to dwell upon the now thoroughly developed readiness of the United States for a foreign war and urged the sending of a military expert to report on American preparations[1161].