Volume II Part 21 (1/2)

Since the month of July, 1885, there has appeared on the other side of the Atlantic a set of military critics, of whom General Wolseley, Commander of the British Army, must be treated as the chief, who deny to General Grant the possession of superior military qualities, and who a.s.sert that General Lee was his superior in the contest which they carried on from February, 1864, to April, 1865. On this side of the Atlantic there is toleration, if not active and open support of General Wolseley's opinion.

General Wolseley is ent.i.tled to an opinion and to the expression of his opinion; but his authority cannot be admitted. On the practical side of military affairs his experience is a limited experience only.

It is not known that General Wolseley ever, in any capacity, engaged in any battle that can be named in comparison with the battles of the Wilderness, with Spottsylvania, with Cold Harbor, or the battle of Five Forks; and it is certain that it was never his fortune to put one hundred thousand men, or even fifty thousand men, into the wage of battle and thus a.s.sume the responsibility of the contest.

It was never the necessity of the situation that General Lee should a.s.sume the offensive, and in the two instances where he did a.s.sume the offensive his campaigns were failures; and can any one doubt that if General Grant had been in command either at Antietam or Gettysburg, the war would than have come to an end of the left bank of the Potomac River by the capture of Lee's army? If this be so, then Lee's undertaking was a hazard for which there could have been no justifying reason, and his escape from destruction was due to the inadequacy of the men in command of the Northern armies. Following this remark I ought to say that General Meade was a brave and patriotic officer, but he lacked the qualities which enable a man to act promptly and wisely in great exigencies. While General Lee was acting on the defensive did he engage in and successfully execute any strategic movement that can be compared with Grant's campaign of May, 1863, through Mississippi and to the rear of Vicksburg? Or can General Wolseley cite an instance of individual genius and power more conspicuous than the relief of our besieged army at Chattanooga, the capture of six thousand prisoners, forty pieces of artillery, seven thousand stands of small arms and large quant.i.ties of other material of war?

During the period of reconstruction Alexander H. Stephens was examined by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives as to the condition and purposes of the South. When the examination was over I asked him when he came to the conclusion that the South was to be defeated. He said: ”In the year 1862.” I then said: ”In that year you had your successes. What were the grounds of your conclusions?”

In reply he said: ”It was then that I first realized that the North was putting its whole force into the contest, and I knew that in such a contest we were to be destroyed.”

If I were to imagine a reason, or to suggest an excuse for General Lee's two unsuccessful aggressive campaigns, I should a.s.sume that, simultaneously with Mr. Stephens, he had reached the conclusion that time was on the side of the North, and that the Fabian policy must fail in the end.

In an aggressive movement there was one chance of success. A victory and capture of Philadelphia, Baltimore and Was.h.i.+ngton might lead to an arrangement by which the Confederacy would be recognized, or a restoration of the Union secured upon a basis acceptable to the South.

A desperate undertaking, no doubt, but it is difficult to suggest a more adequate reason for the conduct of General Lee.

I cannot, as a civilian, a.s.sume to give a judgment which shall be accepted by any one, upon the relative standing of military men; but I cannot accept, without question, the decision of a military man who never won a great victory in a great battle, upon a chieftain who fought many great battles and never lost one.

I end my observations upon General Grant as a soldier by the relation of an incident in my acquaintance with General Sherman, which was intimate during the four years that I was at the head of the Treasury Department.

It was my custom in those years to spend evenings at General Sherman's, where we indulged ourselves in conversation and in the enjoyment of the game of billiards. Our conversations were chiefly upon the war. In those conversations General Grant's name and doings were the topics often. General Sherman never inst.i.tuted a comparison between General Grant and any one else, nor did he ever express an opinion of General Grant as a military leader; but his conversation always a.s.sumed that General Grant was superior to every other officer, himself, General Sherman, included.

In concurrence with the opinion of General Sherman the friends of General Grant may call an array of witnesses who, both from numbers and character, are ent.i.tled to large confidence.

During the four years of the Civil War more than two million men served in the Northern Army. Many of them, more than a majority of them, probably, served for at least three years each. With an unanimity that was never disturbed by an audible voice of dissent, the two million veterans gave to General Grant supremacy over all the other officers under whom they had served. With like unanimity the chief officers of the army a.s.signed the first place to General Grant, and never in any other war of modern times has there been equal opportunity for the applications of a satisfactory test to leaders. In all the wars which England has been engaged since the fall of Napoleon, except, possibly, the Crimean War, the opposing forces have been composed of inferior races of men. The fields of contest have been in India, Egypt and South Africa. From such contests no satisfactory opinion can be formed as to the qualities of the leaders of the victorious forces.

In our Civil War the men and the officers were of the same race in the main, and the educated officers had been alike trained at West Point.

Except in numbers, the armies of the North and the South were upon an equality, and in all the great contests, the numbers engaged were equal substantially. The quality of the man and officers may be gauged and measured with accuracy from the fact that at s.h.i.+loh, in the Wilderness and at Gettysburg the same fields were contested for two and three continuous days. It has been said of Mr. Adams that when an English sympathizer with the South lauded the bravery of the Southern Army, Mr. Adams replied: ”Yes, they are brave men; they are my country- men.”

The Southern Army was composed of brave men and its officers were qualified by training and experience to command any army and to contest for supremacy on any field.

My readers should not a.s.sume that I have avoided a discussion of the characteristics of General Grant in his personality and as a civil magistrate.

The voice of those who in 1872 denied his ability and questioned his integrity is no longer heard; but there are those at home and abroad who either teach or accept the notion that General Grant has become great historically by having been the favorite of fortune.

[* From the New York _Independent_.]

XL BLAINE AND CONKLING AND THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1880

The controversy between Mr. Blaine and Mr. Conkling on the floor of the House of Representatives in the Thirty-ninth Congress was fraught with serious consequences to the contestants, and it may have changed the fortunes of the Republican Party.

Mr. Conkling was a member of the Thirty-seventh Congress, but he was defeated as a candidate for the Thirty-eighth. He was returned for the Thirty-ninth Congress. During the term of the Thirty-eighth Congress he was commissioned by the Department of War as judge-advocate, and a.s.signed for duty to the prosecution of Major Haddock and the trial of certain soldiers known as ”bounty jumpers.” That duty he performed.

When the army bill was before the House in April, 1866, Mr. Conkling moved to strike out the section which made an appropriation for the support of the provost-marshal general. General Grant, then in command of the army, had given an opinion, in a letter dated March 19, 1866, that that office in the War Department was an unnecessary office.

Mr. Conkling supported his motion in a speech in which he said: ”My objection to this section is that is creates an unnecessary office for an undeserving public servant; it fastens, as an incubus upon the country, a hateful instrument of war, which deserves no place in a free government in a time of peace.”

Thus Mr. Conkling not only a.s.sailed the office, he a.s.sailed the officer, and in a manner calculated to kindle resentment, especially in an officer of high rank. General James B. Fry was provost-marshal-general.

He was able to command the friends.h.i.+p of Mr. Blaine, and on the thirtieth day of April, Mr. Blaine read from his seat in the House a letter from General Fry addressed to himself. Thus Mr. Blaine endorsed the contents of the letter.