132 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS

one of the very greatest of Virginia's statesmen and philanthropists explicitly advocating just such an attempt as that made to fire New York. " She [England] ," writes Thomas JefTerson in 1812, may burn New York, indeed, by her ships and Congreve rockets, in which case we must burn the city of London by hired incendiaries, of which

In all these manifold schemes of Benjamin I look in vain, so far as the records go, for evidence of large, far- reaching, creative statesmanship. Again and again I ask myself what Cavour would have thought, have devised, have done in that position. For it is sufficiently manifest that a man of Cavour' s type was what the Confederacy needed — and did not get. Yet would any man of high statesmanlike genius and close practical grasp have at- tempted to solve the impossible problem of reconciling the loose theory of state rights and the fiercely central- ized government required to cope with the overwhelm- ing force of the United States?

At any rate, Benjamin was no Cavour. His biographer does indeed point out that he had something of the dreamy side of his race, as shown in the unpractical con* ceptions of his early business effort. But dreamers do not make statesmen, usually quite the contrary. And Benjamin's practical statesmanship was, I think, rather of the makeshift order. It is very rare that in his diplo- matic correspondence we find any reference to the cloudy future of the Confederacy, and the only instance in which

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