Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/454

 444 Southern Historical Society Papers.

those to whom these two special and very different gifts had been granted by nature. Beauregard's sagacity in foreseeing, as if by in- tuition, the intended movements of the enemy; his inexhaustible fer- tility in inventing and devising plans after plans to meet his own exi- gencies and those of others ; his ingenuity in gathering means of defence or offence, his indefatigable attention to the smallest details, which is the characteristic of great commanders ; his sleepless capacity for labor, the precision and lucidity of his orders and military corres- pondence, are individual traits which are conspicuous. He also pos- seses that magnetism which all great captains have exercised on their troops. In his campaigns he combined caution with dash, boldness with prudence ; a boldness which he thought justified by the hesita- tions and timidity, if not by the actual incapacity, of the enemy. Wherever he appeared despondency gave way to encouragement. His equals in command, although sometimes differing with him, would repeatedly consult him, by telegrams or otherwise, on the propriety of their own movements, thereby exhibiting complete reliance on his judgment and on his coup d' osil, embracing, like the eagle's eye, an immensity of distance and a variety of objects.

From the beginning to the end of the Secession War, there was an irreconcilable divergence of opinion between General Beauregard and the Confederate Government as to the policy of the military operations to be adopted. Yielding, probably to the clamors of localities, and to the pressure of other exigencies and considerations, the Government endeavored to protect every portion of the very extensive area of the Confederacy. This necessitated a scattering of forces. Beauregard was for concentrating all the vitality of the Con- federate body into a large army, which would have made short the arbitrament of arms, instead of its being prolonged. Such a system might have been successful, and if not, it would have left us less exhausted by a defeat which would at once have put an end to the conflict. Unfortunately it continued to be throughout the policy of extension against concentration, of general, permanent and indis- criminate retention against partial and temporary abandonment. But this universal would-be protection turned out to be universal and absolute ruin; for, as we have said in the first pages of this essay, nothing can be more surely fatal than the prolongation of the strug- gle of a much weaker power against a much superior one, because, when it comes to bleeding, a giant can more easily afford to lose one pint of blood than a pigmy one single drop.

A man, like Frederic the Great, would have allowed Richmond to