Volume Xii Part 11 (1/2)

Also for the battle of Fredericksburg (Dec. 13, 1862) Lee deserves no special praise. Doubtless his unerring engineer eye picked the fighting-line, and his already great prestige inspired his brave army.

But that was all. The pluck of his officers and men and Burnside's incapacity did the rest.

Never did a general carry to battle a better plan of battle than Fighting Joe Hooker's at Chancellorsville (May 2-3, 1863), and rarely has one marched from a battle that had proved for his own side a more lamentable fiasco. Taking the offensive with vast advantage in numbers, he proposed to hold Lee in place with one of his wings while he thrust the other behind Lee's left, between the Confederate army and Richmond.

But he had started a game at which two could play and had challenged a more deft and daring gamester than himself. Early divining his purpose, Lee, leaving a small part of his force to engage Hooker's left, with the rest vigorously a.s.sumed the counter-offensive, sending Jackson, as usual, around Hooker's extreme right. Both movements completely succeeded.

Now appeared the folly of promoting a general to the heads.h.i.+p of a great army simply because of his fighting-quality and his success with a division or a corps. Attacked in front and routed on his flank, Hooker did exactly what all who knew him would have taken oath that he would never do. Instead of going straight ahead with vengeance and bidding his far left do the same, he ordered and executed a retreat to his old position north of the Rappahannock.

There were those who laid this disaster to Hooker's intemperance.

President Lincoln probably had such a suspicion, when, sending General Hooker west to join General Sherman, he admonished him in pa.s.sing through Kentucky ”to steer clear of Bourbon County.” Though Hooker was not a total-abstainer, Chancellorsville is not to be explained by that fact any more than Jubal A. Early's defeat by Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley is referrible to his use of apple-brandy.

Hooker did not create his own defeat, as Burnside may, with little exaggeration, be said to have done at Fredericksburg. Lee defeated him, and deserved the immense fame which the victory brought. No wonder he began to plan for the offensive again. Soon the ever-memorable Gettysburg campaign was begun.

The details of this campaign, even those of the battle itself (July 1-3, 1863), we cannot give here. Nor need we. The world knows them:--the first day, with Hill's and Ewell's success, costing the Union the life of its gallant General Reynolds, commanding the First Corps; the second day, when, back and forth by the Devil's Den, Hood on one side and Dan Sickles on the other, fought their men as soldiers had never fought on the American continent before; and the third day, when for an hour a hundred cannon on Seminary Ridge belched h.e.l.l-fire at a hundred cannon on Cemetery Ridge, prelude, in the natural key, to Pickett's death-defying charge.

”A thousand fell where Kemper led, A thousand died where Garnett bled.

In blinding flame and strangling smoke The remnant through the batteries broke And crossed the works with Armistead.”

The Union army was for the first time fighting a great battle on Union soil. The homes of many who were engaged stood within sound of the Gettysburg cannon. As the Confederates did in many other engagements, the Federals here felt that they were repelling an invader, and they fought accordingly, with a grim iron resisting power which they had never displayed before.

Great praise was due to General Hanc.o.c.k, and perhaps still more to General Howard, for early perceiving the strength of Cemetery Hill as a defensible position. On the first day, after General Reynolds had fallen at his post of duty with the First Corps, General Doubleday, next in command, was on the point of ordering a retreat, the attack seeming too fearful to be withstood. But Howard, coming up with the Eleventh Corps and a.s.suming command of the field, overruled Doubleday, and, by enforcing a most stubborn resistance against Hill's and Ewell's desperate onsets, probably saved Cemetery Hill from capture that evening.

So far as has ever yet been made apparent, every plan which Lee formed for the battle of Gettysburg, every order which he gave, was wise and right. We do not except even his management on the third day. It is easy to find fault with dispositions when they have failed of happy results.

Men have said that instead of attacking in front on that day Lee should have drawn Ewell from the left and thrown him to Longstreet's right, manoeuvring Meade out of his position. But in this matter, too, Lee's judgment was probably good. Changing his plan of attack would have been a partial confession of defeat, to some extent disheartening his men.

The Union Sixth Corps, fresh and free, General John Sedgwick at its head, was sure to have pounced on any troops seeking to trouble Meade's left, and, had Meade been successfully flanked and forced back, he would have retired to Pipe Creek and been stronger than ever.

Of course, Pickett should never have been sent forward alone. You could wade the Atlantic as easily as he, unsupported, could go beyond that stone wall. But, from all one can learn, Lee was in fact not responsible for Pickett's lack of support, although in almost guilty n.o.bleness of spirit he a.s.sumed the responsibility, and silently rested under the imputation of it till his death.

Had Lee's great subordinates, Ewell at nightfall on the first day, and Longstreet on the other two days, seconded him with the alacrity and devotion usually displayed by them, or had Stonewall Jackson been still alive and in the place of either of these generals, the issue of the battle would almost to a certainty have been very different from what it was. A soldier who had often followed to victory the enterprising Graham of Claverhouse, but, under a weaker leader, saw a battle wavering, cried out, ”O for one hour of Dundee!” So must Lee often have sighed for Stonewall, the loss of whom at Chancellorsville made that, for the Confederacy, a sort of Pyrrhic victory.

Lee's skill at Gettysburg has been questioned in that he fought his army upon the longer line, the big fishhook described by his position lying outside the little one formed by the Federal army. But Lee fought on the outer line also at Second Bull Run, winning one of the neatest victories in modern warfare.

John Codman Ropes, the well-known military critic, says of this battle: ”It would be hard to find a better instance of that masterly comprehension of the actual condition of things which marks a great general than was exhibited in General Lee's allowing our formidable attack, in which more than half the Federal army was taking part, to be fully developed and to burst upon the exhausted troops of Stonewall Jackson, while Lee, relying upon the ability of that able soldier to maintain his position, was maturing and arranging for the great attack on our left flank by the powerful corps of Longstreet.”

In Prussia's war with Austria in 1866, Von Moltke's plan at the battle of Sadowa, where he splendidly triumphed, was in the same respect a close imitation of Lee's at Gettysburg. The Prussians occupied the outer fish-hook line, the Austrians the inner. When the pickets closed in the morning Von Moltke saluted King William and said: ”Your Majesty will to-day win not only the battle but the campaign.” At noon this did not appear possible. Prince Frederick Charles's corps were withering under the hottest artillery fire of the century, save that at Gettysburg, just three years earlier to the hour. It seemed as if in fifteen minutes they must give way. But, hark! What means that cheering on the left? New cannons boom and the Austrian fire slackens! Von Moltke knows perfectly well what it means. The Crown-Prince has arrived with his fresh corps.

He has stormed the Heights of Chlum--the Culp's Hill of that battlefield. He enfilades the whole Austrian line. Benedek is beaten; on to Vienna; the war is ended!

It was with a heavy heart that General Lee ordered his brave men southward again--a heart made heavier by many a stinging criticism against him in the Southern press. The resolution that bore him up at this crisis was morally sublime. He could not hope to strengthen his army more. For a time he had to weaken it by sending Longstreet west to a.s.sist Bragg in fighting the battle of Chickamauga. Clothing, rations, animals, and forage, as well as men, were increasingly scarce. The South was exhausted much sooner than any expected, having greatly overestimated its wealth by taking exports and imports for gauge.

Doubtful if ever before was so large and populous a region so far from self-sustaining. The force against Lee, on the other hand, was daily becoming stronger.

Till Gettysburg, Lee had toyed with the Army of the Potomac--not because the rank and file of that army was at fault, and not mainly because of its generals' inability, but mostly because of political interference with its operations. The great and revered President Lincoln, with all his powers, was not a military man. No more was Secretary Stanton. They secured the best military aid they could. From an early period General Halleck--”Old Brains,” men called him because of his immense military information--was their constant adviser; and though he was a scholar rather than a genius, he could doubtless have saved them many an error had they heeded his counsel instead of civilian clamor.

How impressively did not the Civil War teach that fine military scholars.h.i.+p alone, while it may greatly add to a general's efficiency, cannot make a true military leader! Compare Halleck with Grant or Sherman! The Creoles of Louisiana considered their Beauregard the _ne plus ultra_ military genius of the South. One of them was once asked his opinion of General Lee. He replied in his broken English: ”O, Gen Lee a ve'y good gen'l, ve'y good gen'l indeed; Gen Beaugar speak ve'y fav'ble of Gen Lee.” So, at last, did Halleck speak ”ve'y fav'ble” of Grant.

But Gettysburg convinced Lee that he could toy with the Potomac army no longer, and this was more than ever impossible after Grant took command.

Then Greek met Greek, and the death grapple began. At the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania, and most mercilessly of all at Cold Harbor, Grant drove his colossal battering-ram against Lee's gray wall, only to find it solid as Gibraltar.

This struggle tested both commanders' mettle to the utmost. At the end of the hammering campaign, after losing men enough to form an army as large as Lee's, Grant's van was full twice as far from Richmond as McClellan's had been two years before. Not once was Lee flanked, duped, or surprised. As always. .h.i.therto, so now, his darling mode of defence was offence,--to fight,--Grant's every blow being met with another before it hit. Only once were Lee's lines forced straight back to stay.

Even then, at the Spottsylvania ”b.l.o.o.d.y angle,” the ground he lost hardly sufficed to graveyard the Union men killed in getting it. In swinging round to Petersburg, and again at the springing of the Petersburg Mine, Grant thought himself sure to make enormous gains; but Lee's insight into his purposes, and lightning celerity in checkmating these, foiled both movements, giving the mine operation, moreover, the effect of a deadly boomerang.