Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/299

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military jurisdiction of the Confederacy. Price's movements came sufficiently near a splendid success to vindicate his generalship, and that is the point involved in the parallel. Jackson and Price planned and executed within the sphere of military genius, achievements most honorable to the art of war, and those achievements were reached under quite analogous circumstances, testing the character of the troops under each.

A victory at Shiloh would have wrecked the cause of the United States irretrievably. A victory at Gettysburg would have accom- plished the same result. At Shiloh, April 5, 1862, General A. S. Johnston had driven Grant's army from three to four miles and crowded the whole broken mass upon the brink of the Tennessee. Two hours more of life to him, had he fallen at 4 P. M. instead of 2 P. M. on that day, the military resources of the United States west of the Potomac would have been annihilated. Beauregard, going on the field on a bed, wasted by protracted illness, never having ap- preciated or sympathized with the strategy of the occasion as devel- oped by his great commander, recalled the troops from the very arms of victory, and an assured success of the Confederacy. At Gettysburg, July 3, 1863, General Lee planned a battle that stands, as to wisdom and feasibility, second to none which the master mind of Napoleon ever conceived. Not Marengo nor Wagram, nor any other field of the twenty years of Napoleon's career, surpasses in the splendor of the military art Lee's Gettysburg, as his orders read. Longstreet, afflicted as Early told us he was, often with "an intel- lectual and physical inertia," point blank refused to execute those orders, and the only thing to show on our side is the incomparable achievement of Pickett's division.

Stuart rode around McClellan on the Chickahominy and beat back Hooker's cavalry sent to assist that chieftain's "on to Richmond." Wheeler rode around Rosecrans' army at Chattanooga, destroyed his wagon train of 1,000 laden wagons, and shot the 4,000 mules that drew it; went nearly to Nashville, destroying depots of supplies all along his route, and shooting army mules a ride of the Confederate cavalry leader which resulted in the immediate removal of Rosecrans. Forrest, with 4,500 men under him about Tupelo, Miss., found 20,000 cavalry in his front brought out from Memphis. He tele- graphed General Maury at Mobile that he stood no chance against such a host in the open field, but if Maury would consent, he would go behind them to Memphis and, destroying their stores there, com- pel them to retreat. The gallant Maury replied: "Go. but don't