Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1885 — GENERALSHIP. [ARTICLE]

GENERALSHIP.

Military Reputations Sometimes Depend ’ on “tho Chances.” Military reputations aro cnnous things. If you ask any well-edncated foreigner who was the greatest general' of our war, ten to one he will answer Gen. Lee. Yet soldiers know that Lee was a mere desk general, without plan or dash. Before the w&r old Gen. Scot, who loyed him, used to say that, with the exception of himself, Bpb Lee was the only man in this, country who could handle men. He took this reputation into th© Southern army, and he was idolized. He was a courteous, dignified man, who made himself up after Washington. His soldiers trusted him implicitly, and he had the inner lines, so that it was reckoned he had won a victory every time he escaped annihilation. President Davis was deferential to him, and the corps commanders regarded him as omniscient and invincible. But, in point of fact, there is not one of his battles which military students will hereafter be required to study. So with Stonewall Jackson. He was known at West Point as a religions fanatic. In the Southern army he was enterprising, audacious, swift in action, but a man m'ght easily make a reputation when he has only commanders like Banks and Premont and McClellan to encounter. If Stonewall Jackson had lived long enough to meet such men as Sherman and Sheridan his fame might not have stood as high as it does. When our warbroke out, the eyeS of soldiers were fixed upon McClellan, Kosecrans, Stone, McDowell and Buell. These were to be the coming men. They all proved failures. Grant cut no figure in Mexico. Sherman was said to be a crank. Sheridan was unknown. It required circumstances to develop them. Grant showed from the first the intuitive capacity of the born soldier. After the fall of Port Donelson, a brothef-in-arms took the liberty of drawing his attention to the awful risk he had run by deviating from the rules of war. The General replied: “Yes, I know all that; but I knew the men on the other side and I took the chances. You do not suppose I would have acted so if Lee had been in command of the fort ?” So when he resolved on his march round Vicksburg by way of the river, he knew he was acting contrary to the rules of war;, but he took the risks, and, for fear of interference from' Washington, he would not let Gen. Halleck know what he was doing till he was past recall. Sure enough, as soon as telegrams could reach him, Halleck countermanded the movement; but it was to late, and in due course Vicksburg fell.

Toward the qlose of the war the generals on both sides began to understand their business, and it was not safe to reckon on errors escaping notice. The North, it must be admitted, had a good deal of good luck. If Lee had the enterprise to break through Meade’s line and join Johnston in North Carolina after the surrender of Richmond, the war might have been indefinitely prolonged. If Hood had had common sense enough to give Nashville the go-by and march through Kentucky into Ohio, there is no saying what the results might not have been. He could probably have cut the North in fcwbjTSs B hefman"cut the Bbutth“ "But he was not enough of a general to see the opportunity which Thomas’ inertia offered him. A truly great general must know when to obey the laws of war and when to violate them. This is just what Grant and Sherman knew. Napoleon, in his compendium of military instructions to his brother Joseph when he went to Spain, enjoined upon him: “The art of war is an art which is founded on principles that must not be violated! To lose one’s line of operation is a performance so dangerous that to be guilty of it is a crime.” Yet this is what Sherman did in Georgia, with the happiest results. So with the French themselves in Algeria. The first rule of war is that an army must consist of due proportions of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, yet the first order of the day issued by Bugeaud when he took command of the French army directed nine-tenths of the artillery to be shipped back to France. He wanted to train his troops to fighting at short range, and to lure the enemy into close quarters. The result was the battle of Isly. When history comes to be deliberately written and men are measured not by what people said of them at the time, but by what they actually did, the Southern generals who will stand highest in the ranks of fame —side by side with Grant and McPherson, and Sherman and Sheridan—will be Gens. Joe Johnston and Albert Sidney Johnston. — San Francisco Chronicle.