Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 06.djvu/152

142 has of late excited a good deal of attention and comment in the public press. A number of Northern papers have had severe criticisms of statements in reference to different Federal Generals, but of these we have nothing to say; nor do we propose any detailed reply to his comments on Southern Generals. His disparaging remarks about "Stonewall" Jackson, and his opinion that he would have been badly beaten if Sheridan or "any of our great generals" had been opposed to him, excite a smile and a fervent wish from an old "foot cavalryman" that Sheridan, or even Grant himself, had been in Jackson's front on that memorable Valley campaign. It is useless to speculate on what the result would have been; but we feel every confidence that "Cavalry Sheridan" would never afterwards have awakened the poet's lyre, and that the world would never have had this "table-talk."

His remark, "I have had nearly all of the Southern Generals in high command in front of me, and Johnston gave me more anxiety than any of the others; I was never half so anxious about Lee," has very naturally raised the question, "When and where was General J. E. Johnston ever in Grant's front?" That great commander, with a very inadequate force, was in Grant's rear, while he was besieging Vicksburg; but with the heavy fortifications which protected him, and in the light of his statement in the next paragraph, that he did not know that "Johnston was coming" until he read his book, it is difficult to see the cause of General Grant's "anxiety."

But the following is, perhaps, the most remarkable of all of the wild statements of this effort to manufacture history: