Page:A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence in the Confederate States of America.djvu/38

34 claimed that Grant fights and writes better than Alexander, and Hannibalm and Cesar and Napoleon, and all the rest; and when, in the exercise of his great powers of compostion, he turns the batteries of his rhetoric on Butler. I say, in his own classic language, "Go in!" You can't him a lick amiss. I cannot, however, but he amused at the effort to make Butler the scape-goat: and cannot help thinking that Grant ought to have known, beforehand, that he (Butler) was unfit to make war, except on defenceless women and children, and that the trophies valued by him were not those won at the cannon's mouth.

Grant, in his report, has enunciated the leading principles of his strategy, and he is certainly entitled to the credit of having practised them, if not to the merit of originality. They were: "First, to use the greatest number of troops practicable again against the armed force of the enemy;" and. Second, to hammer continuously against the armed tone of the enemy, and his resources, until by mere attrition, if by nothing else, there should be nothing left to him but an equal submission, with the loyal section of our common country, to the constitution and laws of the land." (Alas! what has become of the constitution and laws?) This latter principle was more concisely and forcibly expressed by Mr. Lincoln, when he declared his purpose to "keep a pegging." The plain English of the whole ideas to continue raising troops, and to oppose them, in overwhelming numbers. to the Confederate Army, until the latter should wear itself out whipping them, when a newly recruited army might "go in and win." And. this was actually what took place in regard to General Lee's army.

Grant having established his fame as a writer, as well as a fighter, I presume he will give the world the benefit of his ideas, and publish a work on strategy, which I would suggest ought to be called "The Lincoln-Grant or Pegging-Hammer Art of War."

He has made some observations, in his report,about the advantages of interior lines of communication, supposed to be possessed by the Confederate commanders, which are more specious than sound. The Mississippi River divided the Confederacy into two parts, and the immense naval power of the enemy enabled him to render communication across that river after the loss of New Orleans and Memphis, always difficult, and finally to get entire possession of it. On the eastern side of it, the railroad communications were barely sufficient for the transportation of supplies and the transportation of troops over them was always tedious and difficult. The Ohio River, in the West, and the Potomac, in the East with the mountains of Western Virgina rendered it impossible for an invading army to march into the enemy's country, except at one of two fords on the Potomac, just east of the Blue Bridge, and two or three fords above harper's Ferry. The possession of the seas and the blockade of our ports, as well as the possession of the Mississippi, the Ohio and Potomac Rivers, with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the railroads through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee, enabled the enemy to transport troops from the most remote points, with more ease and rapidity than they could be transported over the railroads under the control of the Confederate Government, all of which were in bad condition. The enemy, therefore, in fact, had all the advantages of interior lines; that is rapidity of communication and concentration, with the advantage, also of unrestricted communication with all the world, which his naval power gave him.