the loss of will thesis suf­ fers most from its own particular fallacy of reversibility-that of putting the cart before the horse. Defeat causes demoralization and loss of will; vic­ tory pumps up morale and the will to win. Nothing illustrates this better than the radical transformation of northern will from defeatism in August 1864 to a “”depth of determination … to fight to the last”” that “”astonished”” a British journalist a month later. The southern loss of will was a mirror image of this northern determination. These changes of mood were caused mainly by events on the battlefield. Northern victory and southern defeat in the war cannot be understood apart from the contingency that hung over every campaign