for the responsible office of chief of the Federal staff, which he now holds, they intelligibly account for much of the misfortune which has dogged the steps of the Federal army.
It will be seen from the preceding data that, contrary to the impression generally prevailing here—with exceptions that sufficiently prove the inferiority of amateur to professional soldiers,—the generals on either side have all at some period belonged to the regular army of the United States.
The fact that, from the slowness of promotion therein, an officer was superannuated by the time he attained a colonelcy in the line, accounts for most of the Federal generals being taken at this crisis from among the junior officers,—for youth is essential to military success, few being, like Radetsky, fit for command when octogenarians.
Miles and Sumner are the only colonels of the old army whose names appear; and it may be legitimately inquired wherefore the many promising subalterns that might be enumerated are not in command of volunteer regiments, in place of civilians whose only claim thereto has been their political influence. Having so efficient a force as the regular army at its disposal, when the Federal Executive decided against making it the nucleus of its irregular levies, as in instituting it the careful fathers of the Republic designed, by raising the value of the unit of organisation—the troop or company—from 50 to 100 or even 200, and the regiment from 500 to 5000; it erred grievously in not at least distributing it among the new battalions, in place of trusting entirely to raw tumultuary levies, without any interfusion of veterans to impart confidence and firmness.
The proximate causes of the different fortune which has attended the two groups of generals taken from the same army may, I conceive, be found in the differences of race and of social conditions—as determined by diverse geographical conditions—in the two hostile sections whereinto the former Republic is now divided.
The people of the South—generally of pure English descent, with an interfusion in Louisiana of French, and in Texas of Spanish, blood; inhabiting a fertile region, much of which is yet covered with dense forest, and varying their agricultural pursuits with hunting and other manly amusements; retaining an inferior race in subjection, therefore habituated to command and familiarised from childhood with the use of arms; bold, self-reliant, prompt for emergencies, and accustomed to peril—form a military aristocracy, like that of ancient Poland or Hungary under somewhat analogous conditions, and are peculiarly fitted for warfare.
The Southern gentleman who formerly entered the United States army was generally a landed proprietor, and adopted the profession of arms because possessed of those military tastes distinctive of his people; and it is noticeable that, whereas the great American writers, to the development of whose genius a life of contemplation and retirement was requisite, have almost all issued from the North: the men of action—the eminent soldiers, statesmen, and orators of the republic—have mostly been sons of the South. Fighting for national existence, and to revenge the ruin and havoc wrought by a barbarous enemy, under the most unfavourable circumstances, and with means seemingly inadequate to the magnitude of its undertaking; poorly clad, often shoeless, scantily fed, and indifferently armed, but calmly resolute, and confident in the justice of its cause; the Southern army has not quailed before the immense armaments opposed to it, nor been discouraged by disasters; and its officers being men of military genius, and not military pedants; and its operations being directed by a professional soldier of great ability, calm judgment, and singular discernment in the selection of his instruments—to whom the nation unanimously conceded a dictatorial power suited to the emergency—it has thus far been victorious.
On the other hand, the people of the North is of various origin, divided by antipathies of race, sect, and faction, by opposition of interests, and diversity of pursuits; chiefly aggregated in towns, cities, and their immediate vicinity, therefore largely depraved by the vices, and effeminated by the luxuries, of civilisation; greedy of gain, tricky, arrogant, braggart, and unfamiliar with, as reluctant to arms. The gentleman of the North who formerly entered the U. S. army did so ordinarily to secure a life of indolent ease. The Northern army has been numerically so immense as to be unwieldy, so well provided with military material as to be embarrassed it its movements by its own affluence of means, so confident of success as to be disheartened by the least reverses and thoroughly demoralised by successive defeats, which were partly due to the ignorant interference of the civilian at the head of the Federal government—constitutionally the commander-in-chief—a man vacillating because new to command and unequal to his position; who has been pliant to silly popular clamour when he should have been firm, and impracticable and stubborn when he should have been amenable to counsel.
It may be remarked, in conclusion, that, although the Confederate generals have certainly displayed singular genius, the sanguinary battles protracted through many successive days, while proving the rancour of the combatants, indicate a deficiency in the technical knowledge required to conduct war scientifically.
Carnage is not warfare, whatever the world may say. The great general is he who, from swift apprehension of the accidents of the ground, nice calculation of time and distance, and due consideration of the enemy’s arrangements and strength, effects his discomfiture and a determinate end, with comparatively little loss of life, by scientific disposition, and adroit manœuvring of his own forces. Genius is not self-sufficient for great results: the soldier, like the writer and the artist, only attains consummate skill by preliminary studies and long experience; and from the former distribution of the regular army, wherein these officers learned their profession, along the frontiers in trivial detachments, comparatively few of its officers have ever, previously to the present events, seen a division in the field, or had facilities for acquiring a practical know-
