Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 130.djvu/589

Rh work, is crossed by politics, we must decline to adopt his views. But there can be no question as to the truth of his sketch of the singular likeness between the men who fought against the soldiers of Howe and Clinton, and those who marched against Richmond.


 * We cannot, therefore, be surprised to find in the first soldiers who carried the flag of the stars and stripes under fire, those features which always characterized the Federal volunteer. These were revealed from the very beginning of the contest with the mother country. When hardly brought together they faced boldly, behind the most trifling shelter, the shock of the British veterans. They defended themselves with remarkable tenacity at Bunker's Hill, just as the improvised soldiers of Jackson at New Orleans did fifty years later, and, on a grander theatre, the army of the Potomac at Gettysburg. They were indefatigable in the use of the axe and pick in the sieges of Boston and Yorktown, just as were those volunteers who in four years covered America with their fortifications and intrenchments. So also they were easily shaken when they felt or fancied themselves taken in flank, as at Brandywine and Germantown; difficult to move forward to the assault of a strong position, and forgetful of the principle that there is less danger in a rush upon the enemy than in standing still to receive his fire. They lost their organization rapidly, and, what is more rare, they recovered it again no less promptly. From their first engagements with the English down to the hour which armed one part of them against the other, the American volunteers, aided powerfully by the nature of a country covered with woods and cut up by morasses, rarely let a panic degenerate into a route, and had the remarkable merit of not believing themselves beaten after a defeat.

On this text, taken primarily from the Revolutionary contest, the whole history of the Civil War, as may be seen in the succeeding chapters, is a running commentary. The Comte de Paris justly deserves the praise due to the critic who has first seized the truth of this continuity of American history, and placed it in clear light. It is the more to be regretted that the strong political bias which he throughout displays to the side on which he served, has led to his disfiguring what may be termed the very cream of his great work by introducing strictures on the Confederate troops which we have purposely omitted. It is enough here to say that he speaks of the soldiers at whose head Lee and Jackson won imperishable fame, as "destitute individually of tenacity and perseverance;" a description that so utterly belies what history records of the Confederate army of northern Virginia, that it is difficult to believe it to have been penned by the same critic who has surveyed and described its adversaries with such admirable truth.

The military history of the American war is not limited, like those of modern European struggles, to months or weeks, but covers just four years of continuous contest; while in each year the immense resources gradually brought to bear, and the vast extent of the territory in dispute, broke off the conflict into sections, forming campaigns important in themselves, and at first sight little connected with the rest. As before mentioned, the Comte de Paris has done more than any writer who preceded him to preserve a spirit of unity throughout his narrative. He has found it necessary, nevertheless, to pass in separate chapters from east to west, and again from either flank to the connecting operations in the centre. It would be vain to attempt within our limits to follow him over these various fields, and, indeed, the four volumes when complete only carry down the story to the battle of Fredericksburg. For our purpose of showing the special value of this work it will be better to examine a few of those parts which illustrate the American system of forming and training and employing an army, as opposed to the European methods, and the distinctive peculiarities displayed by such an army in the field.

And first to speak of its formation. Uniforms, the comte begins by observing, were plentiful enough on national holidays before the war; but the militia regiments wont to display themselves on such festive occasions were meant only for show. So notorious was this, that one of the New York battalions, composed mainly of French immigrants, had assumed the mock title of the "Gardes Lafourchette" And while according to the popular boast 