Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 2.djvu/220

 370 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS emits, no matter where they came from, a bounty of over five hundred dollars a head, triumphed over an exhausted South, hemmed in on all sides, and even cut off from all communication with the outside world. The desperate, though drawn battle of Gettysburg was the death-knell of Southern independence ; and General Sherman's splendid but almost unopposed march to the sea showed the world that all further resistance on the part of the Confederate States could only be a profitless waste of blood. In the thirty-five days of fighting near Rich- mond which ended the war in 1865, General Grant's army numbered 190,000, that of Lee only 51,000 men. Every man lost by the former was easily re- placed, but an exhausted South could find no more soldiers. "The right of self- government," which Washington won and for which Lee fought, was no longer to be a watchword to stir men's blood in the United States. The South was humbled and beaten by its own flesh and blood in the North, and it is difficult to know which to admire most, the good sense with which the result was accepted in the so-called Confederate States, or the wise magnanimity displayed by the victors. The wounds are now healed on both sides ; Northerners and Southern- ers are now once more a united people, with a future before them to which no other nation can aspire. If the English-speaking people of the earth cannot all acknowledge the same sovereign, they can, and I am sure they will, at least com- bine to work in the interests of truth and of peace for the good of mankind. The wise men on both sides of the Atlantic will take care to chase away all pass- ing clouds that may at any time throw even a shadow of dispute or discord be- tween the two great families into which our race is divided. Like all men, Lee had his faults ; like all the greatest of generals, he some- times made mistakes. His nature shrank with such horror from the dread of wounding the feelings of others, that upon occasions he left men in positions of responsibility to which their abilities were not equal. This softness of heart, ami- able as that quality may be, amounts to a crime in the man intrusted with the direction of public affairs at critical moments. Lee's devotion to duty and great respect for obedience seem at times to have made him too subservient to those charged with the civil government of his country. He carried out too literally the orders of those whom the Confederate constitution made his superiors, al- though he must have known them to be entirely ignorant of the science of war. He appears to have forgotten that he was the great revolutionary chief engaged in a great revolutionary war, that he was no mere leader in a political struggle of parties carried on within the lines of an old, well-established form of government. It was very clear to many at the time, as it will be commonly acknowledged now, that the South could only hope to win under the rule of a military dictator. If General Washington had had a Mr. Davis over him, could he have accomplished what he did ? It will, I am sure, be news to many that General Lee was given the command over all the Confederate armies a month or two only before the final collapse ; and that the military policy of the South was all throughout the war dictated by Mr. Davis as President of the Confederate States. Lee had no power to reward soldiers or to promote officers. It was Mr. Davis who selected