Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 03.djvu/43

 Cruz was little in much the same sense as that other army, of Cortez, whose footsteps it followed, and whose prowess it rivaled. In that campaign

first found fit field. It was he whose skill gave us the quick foot-hold of Vera Cruz. At Cerro Gordo and Contreras his was no mean part of the plan and its accomplishment. At the City of Mexico it was his soldier's eye and soldier's heart which saw and dared what Cortez had seen and dared before, to turn the enemy's strongest position, and assault as well by the San Cosme as by the Belen gateway, a movement greatly hazardous, but, once executed, decisive. In the endless roll of wars that campaign of Mexico must always remain to the judicious critic masterly in conception and superb in execution. But to us it is memorable chiefly as the training school whose pupils were to ply their art on a wider scale to ends more terrible, and Winfield Scott selected from them all Robert E. Lee as the chosen soldier.

The time was soon to come when he should try conclusions with many of that brilliant band, and prove himself the master of each in turn, of McClellan, of Burnside, of Hooker, of Pope, of Meade, of Grant, of whomsoever could be found to lead them by the millions he confronted. When the war of secession began, you all remember how for a time Lee held subordinate place, and how, when what seemed chance gave him command of the forces defending Richmond from the hundred thousand men who could hear, if they would, the bells of our churches and almost the hum of our streets—you all remember how the home-staying critic found fault with him, how he was described as a closet-soldier and a handler of spade and mattock, rather than of gun and bayonet. Sudden and swift was the surprise when the great plan disclosed itself, and the guns at the Meadow Bridges of the Chickahominy cleared the way for the first of those mighty blows which sent McClellan in hopeless rout to the shelter of his shipping, thence to hurry as he might to the rescue of Pope's bewildered divisions, and to organize home guards in the defences of Washington. That single

is itself fame. To amuse an army outnumbering his own by fifty thousand; to watch with a large detachment lest that army should make a junction with the divisions at Fredericksburg; to bring