As always at this period, save for the few newspapers avowedly friendly to the North and one important daily professing strict neutrality--the _Telegraph_--the bulk of the metropolitan press took its cue, as well as much of its war news, from the columns of the _Times_.

This journal, while early assuming a position of belief in Southern success, had yet given both sides in the war fair accuracy in its reports--those of the New York correspondent, Mackay, always excepted.

But from June, 1864, a change came over the _Times_; it was either itself deceived or was wilfully deceiving its readers, for steadily every event for the rest of the year was coloured to create an impression of the unlimited powers of Southern resistance.
Read to-day in the light of modern knowledge of the military situation throughout the war, the _Times_ gave accurate reports for the earlier years but became almost hysterical; not to say absurd, for the last year of the conflict.

Early in June, 1864, Grant was depicted as meeting reverses in Virginia and as definitely checked, while Sherman in the West was being drawn into a trap in his march toward Atlanta[1211].

The same ideas were repeated throughout July.