Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/251

Rh efficiency as military leaders has offered a compensation for their deficiency of sympathy, since the first has in eighteen months succeeded in effecting literally nothing but the consumption of our resources with the largest and best appointed army this country ever saw;—since the second by his criminal tardiness and laxity endangered even the safety of the metropolis of the Middle States, and since the appearance of the third on the battlefield of Shiloh served suddenly to arrest the operations of our victorious troops and to make shortly afterwards the great Army of the West disappear from the scene as by enchantment, so as to leave the country open to the enemy? Has it not been publicly stated in the newspapers and apparently proved as a fact, that the enemy from the commencement of the war has been continually supplied with information by some of the confidential subordinates of so important an officer as Adjutant-General Thomas? Is it surprising that the people at last should have believed in the presence of enemies at our own headquarters, and in the unwillingness of the Government to drive them out? As for me, I am far from being inclined to impeach the loyalty and good faith of any man; but the coincidence of circumstances is such, that if the case were placed before a popular jury, I would find it much easier to act on the prosecution than on the defense.

You say that our Republican generals did no better; I might reply, that between two generals of equal military inefficiency I would in this crisis give a Republican the preference. But that is not the question. I ask you most seriously—what Republican general has ever had a fair chance in this war? Did not McClellan, Buell, Halleck and their creatures and favorites claim, obtain and absorb everything? Were not other generals obliged to go begging merely for a chance to do something for