CHAPTER VII

GREAT SOLDIERS

We have seen how the great crises in our country's history have produced

great men to deal with them. We shall see now how great wars produce

great soldiers. The Revolution produced them; the Civil War produced

them. The second war with England, and the war with Spain failed to

produce them because they were too quickly ended, and without desperate

need. They served, however, to pierce certain gold-laced bubbles which

had been strutting about the stage pretending to be great and impressing

many people with their greatness; but which were, in reality, great only

in self-conceit, and in that colossal! So did the Revolution and the

Civil War, at first, and costly work it was until the last of them had

vanished, to be replaced by men who knew how to fight; for it seems one

of the axioms of history that the fiercer your soldier is in peace, the

more useless he is on a battlefield. The war with Mexico, by a fortunate

chance, found a few good fighters ready at hand, and so was pushed

through in the most brilliant way. One trembles to think how the

Revolution might have begun--and ended!--but for the fact that

Washington, experienced in warfare and disdaining gold lace and empty

boasts, was, by a fortunate chance, chosen commander-in-chief. That

choice is our greatest debt to John and Samuel Adams.

* * * * *

Early in the eighteenth century, there lived in the old historic town of

Salem, Massachusetts, Joseph Putnam and his wife, Elizabeth. They

already had nine children, and, in 1718, a tenth was born to them and

they named him Israel, which means a soldier of God. His career was

destined to be one of the most romantic and adventurous in American

history, but none of his brothers or sisters managed to get into the

lime-light of fame.

Israel himself started in tamely enough as a farmer, having bought a

tract of five hundred acres down in Connecticut. Wild animals had been

pretty well exterminated by that time, but one old she-wolf still had

her den not far from Putnam's farm, and one night she came out and

amused herself by killing sixty or seventy of his fine sheep. When

Putnam found them stretched upon the ground next morning, a great rage

seized him; he swore that that wolf should never have the chance to do

such another night's work; he tracked her to her cave, and descending

without hesitation into the dark and narrow entrance, shot straight

between the eyes he saw gleaming at him through the darkness, and

dragged the carcass out into the daylight. That incident gives some idea

of Israel Putnam's temper, and what desperate things he was capable of

doing when his blood was up.

That was in 1735, and twenty years elapsed before he again appeared upon

the page of history. But in 1755 began the great war with France, and

for the next ten years, Putnam's life was fairly crowded with incident.

Connecticut furnished a thousand men to resist the expected French

invasion, and Putnam was put in command of a company with the rank of

captain. His company acted as rangers, and for two years did remarkable

service in harassing the enemy and in warning the settlers against

lurking bands of Indians, set on by the French. On more than one

occasion, he saved his life by the closest margin. He was absolutely

fearless, and this, together with a clear head and quick eye, carried

him safely through peril after peril, any one of which would have proved

the death of a man less resolute.

He saved a party of soldiers from the Indians by steering them in a

bateau safely down the dangerous rapids of the Hudson; he saved Fort

Edward from destruction by fire at the imminent risk of his life,

working undaunted although the flames were threatening, every moment, to

explode the magazine; a year later, captured by the Indians, who feared

and hated him, he was bound to a stake, after some preliminary tortures,

and a pile of fagots heaped about him and set on fire. The flames were

searing his flesh, when a French officer happened to come up and rescued

him. These are but three incidents out of a dozen such. He seemed to

bear a charmed life, and any of his men would willingly have died for

him. In 1765, when he returned home after ten years of continuous

campaigning, it was with the rank of colonel, and a reputation for

daring and resourcefulness second to none in New England.

Ten years of quiet followed, and Israel Putnam was fifty-seven years of

age--an age when most men consider their life work done. On the

afternoon of April 20, 1775, he was engaged in hauling some stones from

a field with a team of oxen, when he heard galloping hoofbeats down the

road, and looking up, saw a courier riding up full speed. The courier

paused only long enough to shout the tidings of the fight at Concord,

and then spurred on again. Putnam, leaving his oxen where they stood,

threw himself upon horseback, without waiting to don his uniform, and at

sunrise next day, galloped into Cambridge, having travelled nearly a

hundred miles! Verily there were giants in those days!

He was placed in command of the Connecticut forces with the rank of

brigadier-general, and soon afterwards was one of four major-generals

appointed by the Congress for the Continental army. For four years

thereafter he took a conspicuous part in the war, bearing himself always

with characteristic gallantry. But the machine had been worn out by

excessive exertion; in 1779 he was stricken with paralysis, and the last

years of his life were passed quietly at home. For sheer, extravagant

daring, which paused at no obstacle and trembled at no peril, he has,

perhaps, never had his equal among American soldiers.

Not far from West Greenwich, Connecticut, there is a steep and rocky

bluff, the scene of one of Putnam's most extraordinary feats, performed

only a short time before he was stricken down. An expedition, fifteen

hundred strong, had been sent by the British against West Greenwich, and

Putnam rallied a company to oppose the invaders, but his little force

was soon routed and dispersed, and sought to escape across country with

the British in hot pursuit. Putnam, prominent as the leader of the

Americans, was hard pressed, and his horse, weary from a long march, was

failing; his capture seemed certain, for the enemy gained upon him

rapidly; when suddenly, he turned his horse down the steep bluff at his

side, reached the bottom in safety by some miracle, and rode away in

triumph, leaving his astonished and baffled pursuers at the top, for not

one dared follow him!

* * * * *

I have spoken of how the test of war winnows the wheat from the chaff.

This was so in those days as in these, and, as an amusing proof of it,

one has only to glance over the names of the generals appointed by the

Congress at the same time as Putnam. Artemas Ward, Seth Pomeroy, William

Heath, Joseph Spencer, David Wooster, John Thomas, John Sullivan--what

cursory student of American history knows anything of them? Four others

are better remembered--Richard Montgomery, for the gallant and hopeless

assault upon Quebec in which he lost his life; Charles Lee for

disobeying Washington's orders at the battle of Monmouth and provoking

the great Virginian to an historic outburst of rage; Nathanael Greene

for his masterly conduct of the war in the South; Horatio Gates, first

for a victory over Burgoyne which he did very little to bring about, and

second for his ill-starred attempt to supplant Washington as

commander-in-chief.

Let us pause for a glance at Gates. Born in England, he had seen service

in the British army, and had been badly wounded at Braddock's defeat,

but managed to escape from the field. He resigned from the army, after

that, and settled in Virginia, where his supposed military prowess won

him the appointment of brigadier-general at the outbreak of the

Revolution. He secured command of the Northern army, which had gathered

to resist the great force which was marching south from Canada under

John Burgoyne. He found the field already prepared by General Schuyler,

a much more able officer. Stark had defeated and captured a strong

detachment at Bennington, and Herkimer had won the bloody battle of

Oriskany; the British army was hemmed in by a constantly-increasing

force of Americans, and was able to drag along only a mile a day;

Burgoyne and his men were disheartened and apprehensive of the future,

while the Americans were exultant and confident of victory. In such

circumstances, on September 19, 1777, was fought the first battle of

Bemis Heights, a bloody and inconclusive struggle, supported wholly by

the division of Benedict Arnold, who behaved so gallantly that Gates,

who had not even ridden on the field of battle, was consumed with

jealousy, took Arnold's division away from him, and did not mention him

in the dispatches describing the battle.

The eve of the second battle found the most successful and popular

general in the American army without a command. Gates, deeming victory

certain, thought it safe to insult Arnold, and banished him to his tent;

but on October 7th, when the second struggle was in progress, Arnold,

seeing the tide of battle going against his men, threw himself upon his

horse and dashed into the conflict. In a frenzy of rage, he dressed the

lines, rallied his men, who cheered like mad when they saw him again at

their head, and led a charge which sent the British reeling back. He

pursued the fleeing enemy to their entrenchments, and dashed forward to

storm them, but, in the very sally-port, horse and rider fell

together--the horse dead, the rider with a shattered leg. That ended the

battle which he had virtually conducted in the most gallant manner

imaginable. Had he died then, he would have been a national hero--but

another fate awaited him!

Gates had not been on the field. He had remained in his tent, ready to

ride away in case of defeat. He had ordered all the baggage wagons

loaded, ready to retreat, for he was by no means the kind of general who

burns his bridges behind him. His jealousy of Arnold mounted to fever

heat, but that hero, lying grievously wounded in his tent, was for the

moment beyond reach of his envy.

Burgoyne attempted to retreat, but found it was too late. Surrounded

and hemmed in on every side, he turned and turned for six days seeking

vainly for some way out; but there was no escaping, the American army

was growing in numbers and confidence daily, and his own supplies were

running short. Pride and ambition yielded at last to stern necessity and

he surrendered.

Gates, believing himself a second Alexander, became so inflated with

conceit that he did not even send a report of the surrender to

Washington, but communicated it direct to the Congress, over the head of

his commander-in-chief. Weak and envious, he entered heart and soul into

the plot to supplant Washington in supreme command; but his real

incompetency was soon apparent, for, at the battle of Camden, making

blunder after blunder, he sent his army to disastrous defeat, and was

recalled by the Congress, his northern laurels, as had been predicted,

changed to southern willows. So blundering had been his conduct of the

only campaign that he had managed that his military career ended then

and there, and the remainder of his life was spent upon his estate in

Virginia.

No doubt his petty and ignoble spirit rejoiced at the downfall of the

brilliant man who had won for him his victories over Burgoyne. Let us

speak of him for a moment. In remembering Arnold the traitor, we are apt

to forget Arnold the general. There is, of course, no excuse for

treason, and yet Arnold had without doubt suffered grave injustice. He

was by nature rash to recklessness, at home on the battlefield and

delighting in danger, with a real genius for the management of a battle

and a personality whose charm won him the absolute devotion of his men.

But he was also proud and selfish, and these qualities caused his ruin.

Let us do him justice. Two days after the battle of Concord, he had

marched into Cambridge at the head of a company of militia which he had

collected at New Haven; it was he who suggested the expedition against

Ticonderoga and who marched into the fortress side by side with Ethan

Allen; it was he who led an expedition against Quebec, accomplishing one

of the most remarkable marches in history, and, after a brilliant

campaign, retreated only before overwhelming numbers; on Lake Champlain

he engaged in a naval battle, one of the most desperate ever fought by

an American fleet, which turned back a British invasion and delayed

Burgoyne's advance for a year; while visiting his home at New Haven, a

British force invaded Connecticut, and Arnold, raising a force of

volunteers, drove them back to their ships and nearly captured them;

then, rejoining the northern army, he rendered the most gallant service,

turned Saint Leger back from Oriskany and won virtually unaided the two

battles of Saratoga, which resulted in Burgoyne's surrender.

It will be seen from this that, to the end of 1777, no man in the

American army had rendered his country more signal service. Indeed,

there was none who even remotely approached Arnold in glory of

achievement. But from the first he had been the victim of petty

persecution, and of circumstances which kept from him the credit rightly

due him; and a cabal against him in the Congress prevented his receiving

his proper rank in the service. We have seen how Gates made no reference

to him in reporting the brilliant victory at Saratoga; and the same

thing had happened to him again and again. His close friendship with

Washington caused the latter's enemies to do him all the harm they

could, and Arnold, disgusted at his country's ingratitude, gradually

drifted into Tory sentiments. He married the daughter of a Tory,

associated largely with Tories during a winter at Philadelphia, and at

last resolved to end the war, as he thought, in favor of England by

delivering the line of the Hudson to the British. The result of this

would be to divide the colonies in two and to render effective

co-operation almost impossible.

So he sought and obtained command of West Point in order to carry out

this purpose, began his preparations, and had all his plans laid, when

the merest accident revealed the plot to Washington. Arnold escaped by

fleeing to a British man-of-war in the river, and after a short service

against his country, marked by a raid along the Virginia shore, he

sailed for England, where his last years were spent in poverty and

embittered by remorse. His last great act of treachery blotted out the

brilliant achievements which had gone before, and his name lives only as

that of the most infamous traitor in American history.

Of the great names which come down to us from the Revolution, the one

which seems most admirable after that of Washington himself is that of

Nathanael Greene, not so much because of his military skill, although

that was of the highest order, as because of his pure patriotism, his

lack of selfishness, and his utter devotion to the cause for which he

fought. He was with Washington at Trenton, Princeton, and Monmouth, and

did much to save the army of the battle of the Brandywine. After Gates's

terrible defeat at Camden, he was put in command of the army of the

South, and conducted the most brilliant campaign of the war, defeating

the notorious Sir Guy Tarleton, and forcing Cornwallis north into

Virginia, where he was to be entrapped at Yorktown, and ending the war

which had devastated the South by capturing Charleston. After

Washington, he was perhaps the greatest general the war produced;

certainly he was the purest patriot, and his name should never be

forgotten by a grateful country.

Linked forever with Greene in the annals of southern warfare, are three

men--Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and "Light Horse Harry" Lee--three

true knights and Christian gentlemen, worthy of all honor. The first of

these, indeed, may fairly be called the Bayard of American history, the

cavalier without fear and without reproach. Born in South Carolina in

1732, he had seen some service in the Cherokee war, and at once, upon

news of the fight at Lexington, raised a regiment and played an

important part in driving the British from Charleston in 1776--a

victory so decisive that the southern states were freed from attack for

over two years.

After the crushing defeat of Gates at Camden Marion's little band was

the only patriot force in South Carolina, but he harassed the British so

effectively that he soon became genuinely feared. No one ever knew where

he would attack, for the swiftness of his movements seemed almost

superhuman. No hardship disturbed him; he endured heat and cold with

indifference; his food was of the simplest. Every school-boy knows the

story of how, inviting a British officer to dinner, he sat down

tranquilly before a log on which were a few baked potatoes, which formed

the whole meal, and how the Englishman went away with the conviction

that such a foe as that could never be conquered. No instance of

rapacity or cruelty was ever charged against him, nor did he ever injure

any woman or child.

As a partisan leader, Sumter was second only to Marion, and for two

years the patriot fortunes in the South were in their hands. Together

they joined Greene when he took charge of the southern army, and proved

invaluable allies. Sumter lived to the great age of ninety-eight, and

was the last surviving general officer of the Revolution. He was, too,

the last survivor of the Braddock expedition, which he had accompanied

at the age of twenty-one, and which had been cut to pieces on the

Monongahela twenty years before the battle of Lexington was fought.

"Light Horse Harry" Lee, whose "Legion" won such fame in the early

years of the Revolution and whose services with Greene in the South were

of the most brilliant character, also lived well into the nineteenth

century. It was he who, in 1799, appointed by Congress to deliver an

address in commemoration of Washington, uttered the famous phrase,

"First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen."

His son, Robert Edward Lee, was destined to become perhaps the greatest

general in our history.

* * * * *

So passed the era of the Revolution, and for thirty years the new

country was called upon to face no foreign foe; but pressing upon her

frontier was an enemy strong and cruel, who knew not the meaning of the

word "peace." Set on by the British during the Revolution, the Indians

continued their warfare long after peace had been declared. In the

wilderness north of the Ohio they had their villages, from which they

issued time after time to attack the white settlements to the south and

east. No one knew when or where they would strike, and every village and

hamlet along the frontier was liable to attack at any time. The farmer

tilling his fields was shot from ambush; the hunter found himself

hunted; children were carried away to captivity, and women, looking up

from their household work, found an Indian on the threshold.

The land which the Indians held was so beautiful and fertile that

settlers ventured into it, despite the deadly peril, and in 1787, the

Northwest Territory was formed by Congress, and General Arthur St.

Clair appointed its governor. A Scotchman, brave but impulsive, with a

good military training, St. Clair had made an unfortunate record in the

Revolution. Put in command of the defenses of Ticonderoga in the summer

of 1777, to hold it against the advancing British army under Burgoyne,

he had permitted the enemy to secure possession of a position which

commanded the fort, and he was forced to abandon it. The British started

in hot pursuit, and several actions took place in which the Americans

lost their baggage and a number of men. St. Clair had really been placed

in an impossible position, but his forced abandonment of the fort

impressed the public very unfavorably. He still had the confidence of

Washington, who assigned him to the important task of governing the new

Northwest Territory, and subduing the Indians who overran it. With

Braddock's bitter experience still vividly before him, Washington warned

St. Clair to beware of a surprise in any expedition he might lead

against the Indians, and the events which followed showed how badly that

warning was needed.

In the fall of 1791, St. Clair collected a large force at Fort

Washington, on the site of the present city of Cincinnati, and prepared

to advance against the Miami Indians. He had fourteen hundred men, but

he himself was suffering with gout and had to be conveyed most of the

way in a hammock. By the beginning of November, the army had reached the

neighborhood of the Miami villages, and there, on the morning of the

fourth, was surprised, routed and cut to pieces. Less than five hundred

escaped from the field, the Indians spreading along the road and

shooting down the crazed fugitives at leisure. St. Clair's military

reputation had received its death blow, but Washington, with wonderful

forbearance, permitted him to retain the governorship of the Territory,

from which he was removed by Jefferson in 1802. He lived sixteen years

longer, poor and destitute, having used his own fortune to defray the

expenses of his troops in the Revolution--a debt which, to the lasting

disgrace of the government, it neglected to cancel. He grew old and

feeble, and was thrown from a wagon, one day, and killed. Upon the

little stone which marks his grave is this inscription: "The earthly

remains of Major-General Arthur St. Clair are deposited beneath this

humble monument, which is erected to supply the place of a nobler one

due from his country."

The task which proved St. Clair's ruin was to be accomplished by another

survivor of the Revolution--"Mad" Anthony Wayne; "Mad" because of his

fury in battle, the fierceness of his charge, and his recklessness of

danger--attributes which he shared with Benedict Arnold. He was thirty

years of age at the opening of the Revolution, handsome, full of fire,

and hungering for glory. He was to win his full share of it, and to

prove himself, next to Washington and Greene, the best general in the

army.

His favorite weapon was the bayonet, and he drilled his troops in the

use of it until they were able to withstand the shock of the renowned

British infantry, who have always prided themselves on their prowess

with cold steel. His first service was with Arnold in Canada; he was

with Washington at the Brandywine; and at Germantown, hurling his troops

upon the Hessians, he drove them back at the point of the bayonet, and

retreated only under orders when the general attack failed. At Monmouth,

it was he and his men who, standing firm as a rock, repulsed the first

fierce bayonet charge of the British guards and grenadiers.

So it is not remarkable that, when Washington found an unusually

hazardous piece of work in hand, he should have selected Wayne to carry

it through. The British held a strong fort called Stony Point, which

commanded the Hudson and which Washington was anxious to capture. It was

impossible to besiege it, since British frigates held the river, and it

was so strong that an open assault could never carry it. It stood on a

rocky promontory, surrounded on three sides by water and connected with

the land only by a narrow, swampy neck. The only chance to take the

place was by a night attack, and Wayne eagerly welcomed the opportunity

to try it.

On the afternoon of July 15, 1779, Wayne, at the head of about thirteen

hundred men, started for the fort. He arrived near it after nightfall,

and dividing his force into three columns, moved forward to the attack.

He relied wholly upon the bayonet, and not a musket was loaded. The

advance was soon discovered by the British sentries, and a heavy fire

opened upon the Americans, but they pressed forward, swarmed up the

long, sloping embankment of the fort, and in a moment were over the

walls.

A bullet struck Wayne in the head, and he staggered and fell. Two of his

officers caught him up and started to take him to the rear, but he

struggled to his feet.

"No, no," he cried, "I'm going in at the head of my men! Take me in at

the head of my men!"

And at the head of his men he was carried into the fort.

For a few moments, the bayonets flashed and played, then the British

broke and ran, and the fort was won. No night attack was ever delivered

with greater skill and boldness.

Wayne soon recovered from his wound, and took an active part in driving

Cornwallis into the trap at Yorktown. Then he had retired from the army,

expecting to spend the remainder of his life in peace; but Washington,

remembering the man, knew that he was the one above all others to teach

the Ohio Indians a lesson, and called him to the work. Wayne accepted

the task, and five thousand men were placed under his command and

started westward over the mountains.

He spent the winter in organizing and drilling his forces on the bank of

the Ohio where Cincinnati now stands, but which was then merely a fort

and huddle of houses. He made the most careful preparations for the

expedition, and early in the spring, he commenced his march northward

into the Indian country. The savages gathered to repulse him at a spot

on the Maumee where, years before, a tornado had cut a wide swath

through the forest, rendering it all but impenetrable. Here, on the

twentieth of August, 1794, he advanced against the enemy, and, throwing

his troops into the "Fallen Timbers," in which the Indians were

ambushed, routed them out, cut them down, and administered a defeat so

crushing that they could not rally from it, and their whole country was

laid waste with fire and sword. Wayne did his work well, burning their

villages, and destroying their crops, so that they would have no means

of sustenance during the coming winter. Thoroughly cowed by this

treatment, the Indians sued for peace, and at Greenville, nearly a year

later, Wayne made a treaty in which twelve tribes took part. It marked

the beginning of a lasting peace, which opened the "Old Northwest" to

the white settler.

* * * * *

No soldier of the Revolution, with the exception of Washington, was

elevated to the presidency, nor did any of them attain an exalted place

in the councils of the Nation. Statecraft and military genius rarely go

hand in hand, and it was not until 1828 that a man whose reputation had

been made chiefly on the battlefield was sent to the White House. Andrew

Jackson was the only soldier, with one exception, who came out of the

War of 1812 with any great reputation, and it is only fair to add that

his victory at New Orleans was due more to the rashness of the British

in advancing to a frontal attack against a force of entrenched

sharpshooters than to any remarkable generalship on the American side.

The war with Mexico found two able generals ready to hand, and laid the

foundations of the reputations of many more. "Old Rough and Ready"

Zachary Taylor, who commanded during the campaign which ended with the

brilliant victory at Buena Vista, had been tested in the fire of

frontier warfare, and won the presidency in 1848; and Franklin Pierce,

who commanded one of the divisions which captured the City of Mexico,

won the same prize four years later. It was in this war that Grant, Lee,

Johnston, Davis, Meade, Hooker, Thomas, Sherman, and a score of others

who were to win fame fifteen years later, got their baptism of fire.

Their history belongs to the period of the Civil War and will be told

there; but the chief military glory of the war with Mexico centres about

a man who divided the honors of the War of 1812 with Andrew Jackson but

who failed to achieve the presidency, and whose usefulness had ended

before the Civil War began--Winfield Scott.

A Virginian, born in 1786, Scott entered the army at an early age, and

had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel at the opening of the second

war with England. Two years later, he was made a brigadier-general, and

commanded at the fierce and successful battles of Chippewa and Lundy's

Lane. At the close of the war, he was made a major-general, and received

the thanks of Congress for his services. In 1841, he became

commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States; but, at the

opening of the war with Mexico, President Polk, actuated by partisan

jealousy, kept Scott in Washington and assigned Zachary Taylor to the

command of the armies in the field. Scott had already an enviable

reputation, and had been an aspirant for the presidency, and Polk feared

that a few victories would make him an invincible candidate. Perhaps he

was afraid that Scott would develop into another Andrew Jackson.

However, it was impossible to keep the commander-in-chief of the army

inactive while a great war was in progress, and early in 1847, he was

sent to the front, and on March 9 began one of the most successful and

brilliant military campaigns in history. Landing before Vera Cruz, he

captured that city after a bombardment of twenty days, and, gathering

his army together, started on an overland march for the capital of

Mexico. Santa Anna, with a great force, awaited him in a strong position

at Cerro Gordo, but Scott seized the key of it in a lofty height

commanding the Mexican position, and soon won a decisive victory. The

American army swept on like a tidal wave, and city after city fell

before it, until, on the twentieth of August, it reached the city of the

Montezumas. An armistice delayed the advance until September 7, but on

that day offensive operations were begun. Great fortifications strongly

manned guarded the town, but they were carried one after another by

assault, and on September 14, General Scott marched at the head of his

army through the city gates. The war was ended--a war in which the

Americans had not lost a single battle, and had gained a vast empire.

General Scott came out of the war with a tremendous reputation; but he

lacked personal magnetism. A certain stateliness and dignity kept people

at a distance, and, together with an exacting discipline, won him the

sobriquet of "Old Fuss and Feathers." In 1852, he was the candidate of

the Whig party for President; but the party was falling to pieces, he

himself had no great personal following, and he was defeated by the

Democratic candidate, one of his own generals, Franklin Pierce. He

remained in command of the army until the outbreak of the Civil War. Age

and infirmities prevented his taking the field, and after the disastrous

defeat at Bull Run, he resigned the command. General Scott was renowned

for his striking physique, more majestic, perhaps, even than that of

Washington. He has, indeed, been called the most imposing general in

history.

* * * * *

With General Scott ends another era of our history, and we come to a

consideration of the soldiers made famous by the greatest war of the

nineteenth century--the civil conflict which threatened, for a time, to

disrupt the Union. It was a war waged on both sides with desperate

courage and tenacity, and it developed a number of commanders not,

perhaps, of the very first rank, but standing high in the second.

The first real success of the war was won by George B. McClellan. A

graduate of West Point, veteran of the war with Mexico, and military

observer of the war in the Crimea, he had resigned from the army in 1857

to engage in the railroad business, with headquarters at Cincinnati. At

the opening of the war, he was commissioned major-general, and put in

command of the Department of Ohio. His first work was to clear western

Virginia of Confederates, which he did in a series of successful

skirmishes, lasting but a few weeks. He lost only eight men, while the

Confederates lost sixteen hundred, besides over a thousand taken

prisoners. The achievement was of the first importance, since it saved

for the Union the western section of Virginia which, a year later, was

admitted as a separate state. It is worth remembering that in this

campaign, McClellan's opponent was no less a personage than Robert E.

Lee.

The success was the greater as contrasted with the disaster at Bull Run,

and in August, 1861, McClellan was placed in command of the Army of the

Potomac, gathered about Washington and still discouraged and

disorganized from that defeat and rout. His military training had been

of the most thorough description, especially upon the technical side,

and no better man could have been found for the task of whipping that

great army into shape. He soon proved his fitness for the work, and four

months later, he had under him a trained and disciplined force, the

equal of any that ever trod American soil. He forged the instrument

which, in the end, a stronger man than he was to use. Let that always

be remembered to his credit.

He had become a sort of popular hero, idolized by his soldiers, for he

possessed in greater degree than any other commander at the North that

personal magnetism which wins men. But it was soon evident that he

lacked those qualities of aggressiveness, energy, and initiative

essential to a great commander; that he was unduly cautious. He seems to

have habitually over-estimated the strength of the enemy and

under-estimated his own. With this habit of mind, it was certain that he

would never suffer a great defeat; but it was also probable that he

would never win a great victory, and a great victory was just what the

North hungered for to wipe out the disgrace of Bull Run. Not for eight

months was he ready to begin the campaign against Richmond, and it ended

in heavy loss and final retreat, partly because of McClellan's

incapacity and partly because of ignorant interference with his plans on

the part of politicians at Washington. For it must be remembered that

McClellan was a Democrat, and soon became the natural leader of that

party at the North--a fact which seemed little less than treason to many

of the political managers at the Capital.

One great and successful battle he fought, however, at Antietam,

checking Lee's attempt to invade the North and sending him in full

retreat back to Virginia, but his failure to pursue the retreating army

exasperated the President, and he was removed from command of the army

on November 7, 1862. This closed his career as a soldier. In the light

of succeeding events, it cannot be doubted that his removal was a

serious mistake. All in all, he was the ablest commander the Army of the

Potomac ever had; he was a growing man; a little more experience in the

field would probably have cured him of over-timidity, and made him a

great soldier. General Grant summed the matter up admirably when he

said, "The test applied to him would be terrible to any man, being made

a major-general at the beginning of the war. If he did not succeed, it

was because the conditions of success were so trying. If he had fought

his way along and up, I have no reason to suppose that he would not have

won as high distinction as any of us." In 1864, McClellan was the

nominee of the Democratic party for the presidency, but received only

twenty-one electoral votes.

The command of the Army of the Potomac passed to Ambrose E. Burnside,

who had won some successes early in the war, but who had protested his

unfitness for a great command, and who was soon to prove it. He led the

army after Lee, found him entrenched on the heights back of

Fredericksburg, and hurled division after division against an

impregnable position, until twelve thousand men lay dead and wounded on

the field. Burnside, half-crazed with anguish at his fatal mistake,

offered his resignation, which was at once accepted.

"Fighting Joe" Hooker succeeded him, and was soon to demonstrate that

he, too, was unfitted for the great task. Early in May, believing Lee's

army to be in retreat, he attacked it at Chancellorsville, only to be

defeated with a loss of seventeen thousand men. At the beginning of the

battle, Hooker had enjoyed every advantage of position, and his army

outnumbered Lee's; but he sacrificed his position, with unaccountable

stupidity, moving from a high position to a lower one, provoking the

protest from Meade that, if the army could not hold the top of a hill,

it certainly could not hold the bottom of it; and he seemed unable to

use his men to advantage, holding one division in idleness while another

was being cut to pieces.

It is, perhaps, sufficient comment upon the folly of dismissing

McClellan to point out that within seven months of his retirement, the

Army of the Potomac, which had been the finest fighting-machine in

existence on the continent, had lost thirty thousand men on the field

and thousands more by desertion, and had been converted from a confident

and well-disciplined force into a discouraged and disorganized rabble.

* * * * *

Meanwhile a new star had arisen in the West in the person of U.S.

Grant--"Unconditional Surrender" Grant, as he was called, after his

capture of Fort Donelson--the event which riveted the eyes of the Nation

upon him and which marked the beginning of his meteor-like advancement.

We have already spoken of Grant as President, and of his unfitness

for that high office. There are also many who dispute his ability as

a commander, who point out that his army always outnumbered that opposed

to him, and who claim that his victories were won by brute force and not

by military skill. That there is some truth in this nobody can deny, and

yet his campaign against Vicksburg was one of the most brilliant in this

or any other war. It might be added, too, that it takes something more

than preponderance of numbers to win a battle--as Hooker showed at

Chancellorsville--and that Grant did win a great many.

[Illustration: GRANT]

The truth about Grant is that he was utterly lacking in that personal

magnetism which made McClellan, Sheridan and "Stonewall" Jackson

idolized by their men, and which is essential to a great commander. He

was cold, reserved, and silent, repelled rather than attracted. He

succeeded mainly because he was determined to succeed, and hung on with

bull-dog tenacity until he had worn his opponent out. Not till then did

he stop to take stock of his own injuries. "I propose to fight it out on

this line, if it takes all summer," was a characteristic utterance.

The honors of Union victories were fairly divided with Grant by William

Tecumseh Sherman, a man who, as a general, was greater in some respects

than his chief. Sherman was an Ohioan, and, after graduating from West

Point and serving in California during the war with Mexico, resigned

from the army to seek more lucrative employment. He was given a

regiment when the war opened, and his advance was rapid. He first showed

his real worth at the battle of Shiloh, where he commanded a division

and by superb fighting, saved Grant's reputation.

Grant had collected an army of forty thousand men at Pittsburg Landing,

an obscure stopping-place in southern Tennessee for Mississippi boats,

and though he knew that the Confederates were gathering at Corinth,

twenty miles away, he left his army entirely exposed, throwing up not a

single breastwork, never dreaming that the enemy would dare attack him.

Nevertheless, they did attack, while Grant himself was miles away from

his army, and by the end of the first day's fighting, had succeeded in

pushing the Union forces back upon the river, in a cramped and dangerous

position. The action was resumed next day, and the Confederates forced

to retire, which they did in good order. That the Union army was not

disastrously defeated was due largely to the superb leadership of

Sherman, who had three horses shot under him and was twice wounded, but

whose demeanor was so cool and inspiring that his raw troops, not

realizing their peril, were filled with confidence and fought like

veterans.

Sherman's fame increased rapidly after that. When Grant departed for the

East to take command of the Army of the Potomac, he planned for Sherman

a campaign against Atlanta, Georgia--a campaign which Sherman carried

out in the most masterly manner, marching into Atlanta in triumph on

September 2, 1864. The campaign had cost him thirty-two thousand men,

but the Confederate loss had been much heavier, and in Atlanta the

Confederacy lost one of its citadels. It was especially valuable because

of the great machine shops located there, and these Sherman proceeded to

destroy before starting on his famous "march to the sea."

This, the most spectacular movement of the whole war, was planned by

Sherman, who secured Grant's permission to carry it out, and the start

was made on the fifteenth of November. The army marched by four roads,

as nearly parallel as could be found, starting at seven o'clock every

morning and covering fifteen miles every day. All railroads and other

property that might aid the Confederates were destroyed, the soldiers

were allowed to forage freely, and in consequence a swath of destruction

sixty miles wide and three hundred miles long was cut right across the

Confederacy. A locust would have had difficulty in finding anything to

eat after the army had passed. It encountered no effective resistance,

and by the middle of December, came within sight of the sea.

On December 21, Sherman entered Savannah, and wired Lincoln that he

presented him the city as a Christmas gift. Then he turned northward to

join Grant, taking Columbia, Fayetteville, Goldsboro and Raleigh, and

destroying Confederate arsenals, foundries, railroads and public works

of all descriptions. Lee had surrendered four days before Sherman

marched into Raleigh, and the next day a flag of truce from General

Joseph E. Johnston opened negotiations for the surrender of his army.

This, the virtual close of the Civil War, ended Sherman's career in the

field. In 1866, he was made lieutenant-general, and three years later

succeeded Grant as commander-in-chief of the army, retiring from the

service in 1884, at the age of sixty-four.

Whatever may have been the relative merits of Grant and Sherman as

commanders, there can be no question as to the greatest cavalry leader

in the Union armies, and one of the greatest in any army, Philip Henry

Sheridan. Above any cavalry leader, North or South, except "Stonewall"

Jackson, Sheridan possessed the power of rousing his men to the utmost

pitch of enthusiastic devotion; young, dashing and intrepid himself, his

men were ready to follow him anywhere--and it was usually to victory

that he led them.

Sheridan was a West Pointer, graduating in 1853, and was appointed

captain at the outbreak of the war. It was not until May of 1862 that he

found his real place as colonel of cavalry, and not until the first days

of the following year that he had the opportunity to distinguish

himself. Then, at the battle of Murfreesboro, he broke through the

advancing Confederate line which was crumpling up the right of the Union

army, and turned the tide of battle from defeat to victory. As a reward,

he was appointed major-general of volunteers. In April, 1864, he became

commander of the cavalry corps of the Army of the Potomac, and three

months later made his famous raid along the valley of the Shenandoah.

Entering the valley with an army of forty thousand men, Sheridan swept

Early and a Confederate force out of it, and then, to render impossible

any Confederate raids thereafter with the valley as a base, rode from

end to end of it, destroying everything that would support an army.

Early, meanwhile, had been reinforced, and, one misty morning, fell upon

the Federals while they lay encamped at Cedar Creek. The surprise was

complete, and in a short time the Union army was in full flight.

Sheridan had been called to Washington, and on the morning of the battle

was at Winchester, some twenty miles away. In the early dawn, he heard

the rumble of the cannonade, and, springing to horse, galloped to the

battlefield, to meet his men retreating.

"Face about, boys! face about!" he shouted, riding up and down the

lines; and his men saw him, and burst into a cheer, and reformed their

lines, and, catching his spirit of victory, led by their loved

commander, fell upon Early, routed him and practically destroyed his

army. Perhaps nowhere else in history is there an instance such as

this--of a general meeting his army in full retreat, stopping the panic,

facing them about, and leading them to victory.

In the last campaign against Richmond, Sheridan's services were of

inestimable value; it was he who defeated a great Confederate force at

the brilliant battle of Five Forks; it was he who got in front of Lee's

retreating army and cornered it at Appomattox. He had his full share of

honors, succeeding Sherman as general-in-chief of the army in 1883, and

receiving the rank of general from Congress, just before his death five

years later. Grant, Sherman and Sheridan are the only men in the

country's history who have held this highest of military titles.

* * * * *

After these three men, George H. Thomas was the most prominent commander

on the Union side; notable, too, from the fact that he was a Virginian,

and was considered a traitor by his native state for his adherence to

the Union cause, just as poor old Winfield Scott had been. He had made

something of a name for himself before the Civil War opened,

distinguishing himself in the war with Mexico and winning brevets for

gallantry at the battles of Monterey and Buena Vista. He won a decisive

victory at Mill Springs early in 1862, and saved the army from rout at

Murfreesboro by his heroic holding of the centre. But his most famous

exploit was the defence of Horseshoe ridge, against overwhelming odds,

at the battle of Chickamauga.

The Union right wing had been routed, and the Confederates, certain of a

great victory, turned against the left wing, twenty-five thousand

strong, under command of Thomas. They swarmed up the slope on which

Thomas had taken his position, only to be hurled back with heavy loss.

Again and again they charged, sixty thousand of them, but Thomas stood

like a rock against which the Confederates dashed themselves in vain.

For six hours that terrific fighting continued, until nearly half of

Thomas's men lay dead or wounded, but night found him still master of

the position, saving the Union army from destruction. Ever afterwards

Thomas was known as "The Rock of Chickamauga."

In the following year, he again distinguished himself by defeating Hood

at Nashville, in one of the most brilliant battles of the war. The

defeat was the most decisive by either side in a general engagement, the

Confederate army losing half its numbers, and being so routed and

demoralized that it could not rally and was practically destroyed.

Thomas's plan of battle is studied to this day in the military schools

of Europe, and has been compared with that of Napoleon at Austerlitz.

After Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas, there is a wide gap. No other

commanders on the Union side measured up to them, although there were

many of great ability. McPherson, Buell, Sumner, Hancock, Meade,

Rosecrans, Kilpatrick, Pope--all had their hours of triumph, but none of

them developed into what could be called a great commander. Whether from

inherent weakness, or from lack of opportunity for development, all

stopped short of greatness. It is worth noting that every famous

general, Union or Confederate, and most of the merely prominent ones,

were graduates of West Point and had received their baptism of fire in

Mexico, the only exception being Sheridan, who did not graduate from

West Point until after the war with Mexico was over.

* * * * *

Turning now to the Confederate side, we find here, too, four supremely

able commanders, the first of whom, Robert E. Lee, is believed by many

to be the greatest in our country's history. No doubt some of the renown

which attaches to Lee's name is due to his desperate championship of a

lost cause, and to the love which the people of the South bore, and

still bear, him because of his singularly sweet and unselfish character.

But, sentiment aside, and looking at him only as a soldier, he must be

given a place in the front rank of our greatest captains. There are not

more than two or three to rank with him--certainly there is none to rank

ahead of him.

Robert Edward Lee was a son of that famous "Light Horse Harry" Lee to

whose exploits during the Revolution we have already referred. He was

born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1807, entered West Point at

the age of eighteen, and graduated four years later, second in his

class. His father had died ten years before, and his mother lived only

long enough to welcome him home from the Academy. He was at once

assigned to the engineer corps of the army, distinguished himself in the

war with Mexico and served as superintendent of West Point from 1852 to

1855.

Meanwhile, at the age of twenty-four, he had married Mary Randolph,

daughter of Washington Parke Custis, of Arlington, and

great-grand-daughter of George Washington's wife. Miss Custis was a

great heiress, and in time the estate of Arlington, situated on the

heights across the Potomac from Washington, became hers and her

husband's, but he nevertheless continued in the service. The marriage

was a happy and fortunate one in every way, and Lee's home life was

throughout a source of help and inspiration to him.

In the autumn of 1859, while home on leave, he was ordered to assist in

capturing John Brown, who had taken Harper's Ferry. At the head of a

company of marines, he took Brown prisoner and, protecting him from a

mob which would have lynched him, handed him over to the authorities.

Two years later came the great trial of his life, when he was called

upon to decide between North and South, between Virginia and the Union.

Lee was not a believer in slavery; he had never owned slaves, and when

Custis died in 1859, Lee had carried out the dead man's desire that all

the slaves at Arlington should be freed. Neither was he a believer in

secession; but, on the other hand, he questioned the North's right to

invade and coerce the seceding states, and when Virginia joined them,

and made him commander-in-chief of her army, he accepted the trust.

Shortly before, at the instance of his fellow-Virginian, General Scott,

he had been offered command of the Union army, but declined it, stating

that, though opposed to secession and deprecating war, he could take no

part in an invasion of the southern states.

Curiously enough, the southern press, which was to end by idolizing him,

began by abusing him. His first campaign was in western Virginia and was

a woeful failure, due partly to the splendid way in which McClellan, on

the Union side, managed it, and partly to blunders on the Confederate

side for which Lee was in no way responsible; but the result was that

that section of the state was lost to the Confederacy forever, and Lee

got the blame. Even his friends feared that he had been over-rated, and

he was sent away from the field of active hostilities to the far South,

where he was assigned to command Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. He

accepted the assignment without comment, and went to work immediately

fortifying the coast, to such good purpose that his reputation was soon

again firmly established. Early in 1862, he was recalled to Richmond to

assist in its defense. He found his beautiful estate on the heights

opposite Washington confiscated, his family exiled, his fortune gone.

General Joseph E. Johnston was in command of the forces at Richmond, and

was preparing to meet McClellan, who was slowly advancing up the

peninsula. But Johnston was wounded at the battle of Seven Pines, on May

31, and on the following day, Lee assumed command of the army. He got it

well in hand at once, sent Stuart on a raid around McClellan's lines,

and gradually forced the Union army away from Richmond, until the

capital of the Confederacy was no longer in danger. Flushed with

success, Lee threw his army to the northeast against Pope, routed him,

crossed the Potomac into Maryland, threatened Washington, and carried

the war with a vengeance into the enemy's country. A more complete

reversal of conditions could not be imagined; a month before, he had

been engaged in a seemingly desperate effort to save Richmond; now he

had started upon an invasion of the North which promised serious

results.

But things did not turn out as he expected. The inhabitants of Maryland

did not rally to him, McClellan was soon after him with a great army,

and on September 17, overtook him at Antietam, and fought a desperate

battle; from which Lee, overwhelmed by an army half again as large as

his own, was forced to withdraw defeated, though in good order, and

recross the Potomac into Virginia. Three months later, he got his

revenge in full measure at Fredericksburg, routing Burnside with fearful

loss, and early in May of the following year scored heavily again by

defeating Hooker at Chancellorsville. The last victory was a

dearly-bought one, for it cost the life of that most famous of all

American cavalry leaders, "Stonewall" Jackson, of whom we shall speak

hereafter.

That was the culmination of Lee's career, for two months after

Chancellorsville, having started on another great invasion of the North,

on the fourth day of July, 1863, he was forced to retire from the fierce

battle of Gettysburg with his army seriously crippled and with all hope

of invading the North at an end. He was on the defensive, after that,

with Grant's great army gradually closing in upon him and drawing nearer

and nearer to Richmond. That he was able to prolong this struggle for

nearly two years, especially considering the exhausted state of the

South, was remarkable to the last degree, eloquent testimony to the high

order of his leadership. Toward the last, his men were in rags and

practically starving, but there was no murmuring so long as their

beloved "Marse Robert" was with them.

On the ninth day of April, 1865, six days after the fall of Richmond,

Lee found himself surrounded at Appomattox Courthouse by a vastly

superior force under General Grant. To have fought would have meant a

useless waste of human life. Lee chose the braver and harder course, and

surrendered. He knew that there could be but one end to the struggle,

and he was brave enough to admit defeat. On that occasion, Grant rose to

the full stature of a hero. He treated his conquered foe with every

courtesy; granted terms whose liberality was afterwards sharply

criticised by the clique in control of Congress, but which Grant

insisted should be carried out to the letter; sent the rations of his

own army to the starving Confederates, and permitted them to retain

their horses in order that they might get home, and have some means of

earning a livelihood.

[Illustration: LEE]

When Lee rode back to his army, it was to be surrounded by his ragged

soldiers, who could not believe that the end had come, who were ready to

keep on fighting, and who broke down and sobbed like children when

they learned the truth. The next day, he issued an address to his army,

a dignified and worthy composition, which is still treasured in many a

southern home; and then, mounting his faithful horse, Traveller, which

had carried him through the war, he rode slowly away to Richmond. He was

greeted everywhere with the wildest enthusiasm, and found himself then,

as he has ever since remained, the idol and chosen hero of the southern

people, who saw in him a unique and splendid embodiment of valor and

virtue, second only to the first and greatest of all Virginians, and

even surpassing him in the subtle qualities of the heart.

As has been said, his fortune was gone, and it was necessary for him to

earn a living. The opportunity soon came in the offer of the presidency

of Washington College, at Lexington, where the remainder of his days

were spent in honored quiet. Those five years of warfare, with their

hardships and exposures, had brought on rheumatism of the heart, and the

end came on October 12, 1870. He died dreaming of battle, and his last

words were, "Tell Hill he _must_ come up!"

Next to Lee in the hearts of the Southern soldiers was Thomas Jonathan

Jackson, better known by the sobriquet of "Stonewall," which General Bee

gave him during the first battle of Bull Run. Driven back by the Union

onset, the Confederate left had retreated a mile or more, when it

reached the plateau where Jackson and his brigade were stationed. The

brigade never wavered, but stood fast and held the position.

"See there!" shouted General Bee, "Jackson is standing like a stone

wall. Rally on the Virginians!"

Rally they did, and Jackson was ever thereafter known as "Stonewall."

It was a good name, as representing not only his qualities of physical

courage, but also his qualities of moral courage. There was something

rock-like and immovable about him, even in his everyday affairs, and so

"Stonewall" he remained.

In some respects Stonewall Jackson was the most remarkable man whom the

war made famous. A graduate of West Point, he had served through the

Mexican war, and then, finding the army not to his liking, had resigned

from the service to accept a professorship at the Virginia Military

Institute. He made few friends, for he was of a silent and reserved

disposition, and besides, he conducted a Sunday school for colored

children. It is a fact worth noting that neither of the two great

leaders of the Confederate armies believed in slavery, the one thing

which they were fighting to defend. So Jackson's neighbors merely

thought him queer, and left him to himself; certainly, none suspected

that he was a genius.

Yet a genius he was, and proved it. Enlisting as soon as the war began,

and distinguishing himself, as we have seen, by holding back the Union

charge at Bull Run, he was made a major-general after that battle, and

a year later probably saved Richmond from capture by preventing the

armies of Banks and McDowell from operating with McClellan, making one

of the most brilliant campaigns of the war, overwhelming both his

antagonists, and, leaving them stunned behind him, hastening to Richmond

to assist Lee, arriving just in time to turn the tide of battle at

Gaines Mills.

As soon as McClellan had been beaten back from Richmond, Jackson

returned to the Shenandoah valley, defeated Banks at Cedar Run, seized

Pope's depot at Manassas, and held him on the ground until Lee came up,

when Pope was defeated at the second battle of Bull Run. Two weeks

later, Jackson captured Harper's Ferry, with thirteen thousand

prisoners, seventy cannon, and a great quantity of stores; commanded the

left wing of the Confederate army at Antietam, against which the corps

of Hooker, Mansfield and Sumner hurled themselves in vain; and at

Fredericksburg commanded the right wing, which repelled the attack of

Franklin's division.

These remarkable successes had established Jackson's reputation as a

commander of unusual merit; he was promoted to lieutenant-general, and

Lee came to rely upon him more and more. He had, too, by a certain high

courage and charm of character, won the complete devotion of his men; to

say that they loved him, that any one of them would have laid down his

life for him, is but the simple truth. No other leader in the whole war,

with the exception of Lee, who dwelt in a region high and apart, was

idolized as he was. But his career was nearly ended, and, by the bitter

irony of fate, he was to be killed by the very men who loved him.

On the second day of May, 1863, Lee sent him on a long flanking movement

around Hooker's army at Chancellorsville. Emerging from the woods

towards evening, he surprised and routed Howard's corps, and between

eight and nine o'clock rode forward with a small party beyond his own

lines to reconnoitre the enemy's position. As he turned to ride back,

his party was mistaken for Federal cavalrymen and a volley poured into

it by a Confederate outpost. Several of the party were killed, and

Jackson received three wounds. They were not in themselves fatal, but

pneumonia followed, and death came eight days later.

There was none to fill his place--it was as though Lee had lost his

right arm. The result of the war would have been in no way different had

he lived, but his death was an incalculable loss to the Confederacy. It

was Lee's opinion that he would have won the battle of Gettysburg had he

had Jackson with him, and this is more than probable, so evenly did

victory and defeat hang in the balance there. But, even then, the North

would have been far from conquered, and its superior resources and

larger armies must have won in the end. Perhaps, after all, Jackson's

death was, in a way, a blessing, since it shortened a struggle which, in

any event, could have had but one result.

Another heavy loss which the Confederacy suffered even earlier in the

war was that of Albert Sidney Johnston, killed at the battle of Shiloh.

Jefferson Davis said the cause of the South was lost when Johnston fell,

but this was, of course, only a manner of speaking, for Johnston could

not have saved it. Johnston had an adventurous career and saw a great

deal of fighting before the Civil War began. Graduating at West Point in

1826, he served as chief of staff to General Atkinson during the Black

Hawk war, and then, joining the Texan revolutionists, served first as a

private and then as commander of the Texan army. He commanded a regiment

in the war with Mexico, and in 1857, led a successful expedition against

the rebellious Mormons in Utah.

His training, then, and an experience greater than any other commander

in the Civil War started out with, fitted him for brilliant work from

the very first. At the outbreak of the war, he was put by the

Confederate government in command of the departments of Kentucky and

Tennessee, and on April 6, 1862, swept down upon Grant's unprotected

army at Shiloh. That battle might have ended in a disastrous defeat for

the North but for the accident which deprived the Confederates of their

commander. About the middle of the afternoon, while leading his men

forward to the attack which was pressing the Federals back upon the

river, he was struck by a bullet which severed an artery in the thigh.

The wound was not a fatal, nor even a very serious one, and his life

could have been saved had it been given immediate attention. But

Johnston, carried away by the prospect of impending victory and the

excitement of the fight, continued in the saddle cheering on his men,

his life-blood pulsing away unheeded, until he sank unconscious into the

arms of one of his officers. He was lifted to the ground and a surgeon

hastily summoned. But it was too late.

Johnston's death left the command of the army to General Pierre

Beauregard, who had had the somewhat dubious honor of firing the first

shot of the war against Fort Sumter and of capturing the little garrison

which defended it. Beauregard was a West Point man, standing high in his

class, and his work, previous to the war, was largely in the engineer

corps. When the war began, he was superintendent of the academy at West

Point, but resigned at once to join the South. After the capture of

Sumter, he was ordered to Virginia and was in practical command at the

first battle of Bull Run, which resulted in the rout of the Union

forces. After that, he was sent to Tennessee, as second in command to

Albert Sidney Johnston, and he succeeded to the command of the army on

Johnston's death at Shiloh.

The first day's fighting at Shiloh had resulted in a Confederate

victory, but Beauregard was not able to maintain this advantage on the

second day, and was finally compelled to draw off his forces. Grant

pursued him, and Beauregard was forced to retreat far to the south

before he was safe from capture. Two years later, he attempted to stop

Sherman on his march to the sea, but was unable to do so, and, joining

forces with Joseph E. Johnston, surrendered, to Sherman a few days after

Appomattox.

Joseph E. Johnston had been a classmate of Lee at West Point, and had

seen much service before the Civil War began. He was aide-de-camp to

General Scott in the Black Hawk war; and in the war with the Florida

Indians, was brevetted for gallantry in rescuing the force he commanded

from an ambush into which it had been lured, the fight being so

desperate that, besides being wounded, no less than thirty bullets

penetrated his clothes. In the war with Mexico he was thrice brevetted

for gallantry, and was seriously wounded at Cerro Gordo and again at

Chapultepec. At the beginning of the Civil War, he was

quartermaster-general of the United States army, resigning that position

to take service with the South.

When McDowell advanced against Beauregard at Bull Run, Johnston, who was

at Winchester, hastened with his army to the scene of battle, and this

reinforcement, which McDowell had endeavored vainly to prevent, won the

day for the Confederates. He remained in command at Richmond, opposing

McClellan's advance up the peninsula, but was badly wounded at the

battle of Seven Pines, and was incapacitated for duty for several

months, Lee succeeding him in command of the army.

Johnston was never again to gain any great victories, for he had in some

way incurred the ill-will of Jefferson Davis, and was placed in one

impossible position after another, sent to meet an enemy which always

outnumbered him, and refused the assistance which he should have had.

The last of these tasks was that of stopping Sherman's march to the sea,

but Sherman had sixty thousand men to his seventeen thousand, and a

battle was out of the question.

After Lee's surrender, Davis fled south to Greensboro, where Johnston

found him and advised that, since the war had been decided against them,

it was their duty to end it without delay, as its further continuance

could accomplish nothing and would be mere murder. To this Davis

reluctantly agreed, and Johnston thereupon sought Sherman and made terms

of surrender for his army and Beauregard's. The terms which Sherman

granted were rejected by Congress as too liberal, and another agreement

was drawn up, similar to the one which had been signed between Grant and

Lee. It is worth remarking that the Union generals in the field were

disposed to treat their fallen foes with greater charity and kindness

than the politicians in Congress, who had never seen a battlefield, and

who were concerned, not with succoring a needy brother, but with

wringing every possible advantage from the situation.

To two other southern commanders we must give passing mention before

turning from this period of our history. First of these is James

Longstreet, who had the reputation of being the hardest fighter in the

Confederate service, whose men were devoted to him, and called him

affectionately "Old Pete." The army always felt secure when "Old Pete"

was with it; and, indeed, he did not seem to know how to retreat. He

held the Confederate right at Bull Run, and the left at Fredericksburg;

he saved Jackson from defeat by Pope, at the second battle of Bull Run;

he was on the right at Gettysburg, and tried to dissuade Lee from the

disastrous charge of the third day which resulted in Confederate defeat;

he held the left at Chickamauga, did brilliant service in the

Wilderness, and was included in the surrender at Appomattox. A sturdy

and indomitable man, the Confederacy had good reason to be proud of him.

The second is J.E.B. Stuart, as a cavalry leader second only to

Jackson, and Sheridan, but with his reputation shadowed by a fatal

mistake. He was a past master of the sudden and daring raid, and on more

than one occasion carried consternation into the enemy's camp by a

brilliant dash through it. One of his most successful raids was made

around McClellan's army on the peninsula, shaking its sense of security

and threatening its communications. On another occasion, he dashed into

Pope's camp, captured his official correspondence and personal effects

and made prisoners of several officers of his staff, Pope himself

escaping only because he happened to be away from headquarters. The one

shadow upon his military career, referred to above, was his absence from

the field of Gettysburg.

He was directed to take a position on the right of the Confederate army,

but started away on a raid in the rear of the Federals, not expecting a

battle to be fought at once, and he did not get back to the main army

until the battle of Gettysburg had been lost. The absence of cavalry

was a severe handicap to the Confederate army, and Lee always attributed

his defeat to Stuart's absence; but Stuart maintained that he had acted

under orders, and that the mistake was not his. He was killed in a fight

with Sheridan's cavalry at Yellow Tavern, Virginia, a short time later.

And here we must end the story of the great soldiers of the Confederacy.

There were many others who fought well and bravely--Bragg, A.P. Hill,

Magruder, Pemberton--but none of them attained the dimensions of a

national figure. Weighing the merits of the leaders of the two armies,

they would seem to be pretty evenly balanced. This was natural enough,

since all of them had had practically the same training and experience,

and, during the war, the same opportunities. Lee, Jackson and Johnston

were fairly matched by Grant, Sheridan and Sherman.

The Southern leaders, perhaps, showed more dash and vim than the

Northern ones, for they waged a more desperate fight; but both sides

fought with the highest valor, and if the war did not have for the North

the poignant meaning it had for the South, it was because practically

all of its battles were fought on southern soil, and the southern people

saw their fair land devastated. In no instance did the North suffer any

such burning humiliation as that inflicted on the South by Sherman in

his march to the sea; at the close of the war, despite its sacrifice of

blood and treasure, the North was more prosperous than it had been at

the beginning, while the South lay prostrate and ruined. So to the North

the war has receded into the vista of memory, while to the South it is a

wound not yet wholly healed.

* * * * *

There have been no great American soldiers since the Civil War--at

least, there has been no chance for them to prove their greatness, for

there is only one test of a soldier and that is the battlefield. When

George A. Custer was ambushed and his command wiped out by the Sioux in

1876, a wave of sorrow went over the land for the dashing, fair-haired

leader and his devoted men; yet the very fact that he had led his men

into a trap clouded such military reputation as he had gained during the

last years of the war.

The war with Spain was too brief to make any reputations, though it was

long enough to ruin several. The man who gained most glory in that

conflict was "Fighting Joe" Wheeler, veteran of Shiloh, of Murfreesboro,

of Chickamauga, dashing like a gnat against Sherman's flanks, and

annoying him mightily on that march to the sea; a southerner of the

southerners, and yet with a great patriotism which sent him to the front

in 1898, and a hard experience which enabled him to save the day at

Santiago, when the general in command lay in a hammock far to the rear.

Let us pause, too, for mention of Nelson A. Miles, who had volunteered

at the opening of the Civil War, fought in every battle of the Army of

the Potomac up to the surrender at Appomattox, been thrice wounded and

as many times brevetted for gallantry; the conqueror of the Cheyenne,

Comanche and Sioux Indians in the years following the war; and finally

attaining the rank of commander-in-chief of the army of the United

States; to find himself, as Winfield Scott had done, at odds politically

with the head of the War Department and with the President, and kept at

home when a war was raging. For the same reason as Scott had been,

perhaps, since some of his admirers had talked of him for the

presidency. He was released, at last, to command the expedition against

Porto Rico, which resulted in the complete and speedy subjugation of

that island. A careful and intelligent, if not a brilliant soldier, he

is, perhaps, the most eminent figure which the years since the great

rebellion have developed.

* * * * *

Looking back over the military history of the country since its

beginning, it is evident that America has produced no soldier of

commanding genius--no soldier, for instance, to rank with Napoleon, who,

at his prime, seemed able to compel victory; or with Frederick the

Great, that past master of the art of war. Yet it should be remembered

that both these men were soldiers all their lives, and that they stand

practically unmatched in modern history. Of the next rank--the rank of

Wellington and Von Moltke--we have, at least, three, Washington, Lee,

and Grant; while to match such impetuous and fiery leaders as Ney, and

Lannes, and Soult, we have Harry Lee, Marion, Sheridan, Jackson, and

Albert Sidney Johnston. So America has no reason to blush for her

military achievements--more especially since her history has been one of

peace, save for fifteen years out of the one hundred and thirty-three of

her existence.

SUMMARY

PUTNAM ISRAEL. Born at Salem, Massachusetts, January 7, 1718; served in

French and Indian war, 1755-62; in Pontiac's war, 1764; one of the

commanding officers at battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775;

major-general in Continental army, 1775; took part in siege of Boston,

1775-76; commanded at defeat on Long Island, August 27, 1776; commanded

in high-lands of the Hudson, 1777; served in Connecticut, 1778-79;

disabled by a stroke of paralysis, 1779; died at Brooklyn, Connecticut,

May 19, 1790.

GATES, HORATIO. Born at Maldon, England, in. 1728; served as captain

under Braddock, 1755; settled in Berkeley County, Virginia;

adjutant-general in Continental army, 1775; succeeded Schuyler as

commander in the North, 1777; received Burgoyne's surrender, October 17,

1777; President of the Board of War and Ordnance, November, 1777;

appointed to command in the South, 1780; totally defeated by Cornwallis

at Camden, South Carolina, August 16, 1780; succeeded by General Greene;

died at New York City, April 10, 1806.

ARNOLD, BENEDICT. Born at Norwich, Connecticut, January 14, 1741;

commissioned colonel, 1775; took part in capture of Ticonderoga, 1775;

commanded expedition against Quebec, 1775; made brigadier-general and

commanded at a naval battle on Lake Champlain, 1776; decided the second

battle of Saratoga, 1777; appointed commander of Philadelphia, 1778;

tried by court-martial and reprimanded by Washington, 1780; appointed

commander of West Point, 1780; treason discovered by Washington,

September 23, 1780; conducted British expeditions against Virginia and

Connecticut, 1781; died at London, June 14, 1801.

GREENE, NATHANAEL. Born at Warwick, Rhode Island, May 24, 1742;

distinguished himself at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine and Germantown,

and succeeded Gates in command of the southern army, 1780; conducted

retreat from the Catawba to the Dan, 1781; won victories of Guildford

Court House and Eutaw Springs, 1781; died near Savannah, Georgia, June

19, 1786.

MARION, FRANCIS. Born at Winyaw, South Carolina, 1732; a partisan leader

in South Carolina, 1780-82; served at Eutaw Springs, 1781; died near

Eutaw, South Carolina, February 27, 1795.

SUMTER, THOMAS. Born in Virginia in 1734; in Braddock campaign, 1755;

lieutenant-colonel of regiment of South Carolina riflemen, 1776;

defeated Tories at Hanging Rock, August 6, 1780; defeated by Tarleton at

Fishing Creek, August 18, 1780; defeated Tarleton at Blackstock Hill,

November 20, 1780; member of Congress from South Carolina, 1789-93;

senator, 1801-09; minister to Brazil, 1809-11; died near Camden, South

Carolina, June 1, 1832.

LEE, HENRY. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, January 29, 1756;

distinguished in Revolution as commander of "Lee's Legion"; governor of

Virginia, 1792-95; member of Congress, 1799-1801; died at Cumberland

Island, Georgia, March 25, 1818.

ST. CLAIR, ARTHUR. Born at Thurso, Scotland, 1734; served at Louisburg

and at Quebec, 1758; resigned from British army and settled in Ligonier

valley, Pennsylvania, 1764; appointed colonel, January 3, 1776;

brigadier-general, August 9, 1776; organized New Jersey militia and

participated in battles of Trenton and Princeton; major-general,

February 19, 1777; succeeded Gates in command at Ticonderoga, and

abandoned fort at approach of Burgoyne's army, July, 1777;

court-martialed in consequence, 1778, and acquitted "with the highest

honor"; succeeded Arnold in command of West Point, 1780; before Yorktown

at surrender of Cornwallis, and in South till close of war; delegate to

Continental Congress, 1785-87; governor of Northwest Territory,

1789-1802; defeated by Indians near Miami villages, November 4, 1791;

died at Greensburg, Pennsylvania, August 31, 1818.

WAYNE, ANTHONY. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, January 1, 1745;

member of Pennsylvania legislature, 1774; colonel of Pennsylvania troops

in Canada, 1776; brigadier-general, 1777; served at Brandywine,

Germantown, and Monmouth; stormed Stony Point, July 15, 1779; commanded

at Green Spring, 1781; served at Yorktown; member of Congress from

Georgia, 1791-92; appointed major-general and commander-in-chief of the

army, 1792; won the battle of Fallen Timbers, 1794; negotiated treaty

of Greenville, 1795; died at Erie, Pennsylvania, December 15, 1796.

SCOTT, WINFIELD. Born near Petersburg, Virginia, June 13, 1786; admitted

to the bar, 1806; entered United States army as captain, 1808; served in

war of 1812, distinguishing himself at Queenstown Heights, Chippewa and

Lundy's Lane; brigadier-general and brevet major-general, 1814; served

against Seminoles and Creeks, 1835-37; major-general and

commander-in-chief of the army, 1841; appointed to chief command in

Mexico, 1847; took Vera Cruz, won battles of Cerro Gordo, Contreras,

Churubusco, Molino del Rey and Chapultepec and entered City of Mexico,

September 14, 1847; unsuccessful Whig candidate for President, 1852;

retired from active service, 1861; died at West Point, New York, May 29,

1866.

MCLELLAN, GEORGE BRINTON. Born at Philadelphia, December 3, 1826;

graduated at West Point, 1846; served in Mexican war, 1846-47; sent to

Europe to observe Crimean war, 1855-56; in railroad business, 1857-61;

major-general of volunteers, April, 1861; cleared West Virginia of

Confederates, June and July, 1861; commander Department of the Potomac,

August, 1861; organized Army of the Potomac and conducted Peninsula

campaign, 1861-62; superseded by Burnside, November 7, 1862; Democratic

candidate for President, 1864; governor of New Jersey, 1878-81; died at

Orange, New Jersey, October 29, 1885.

BURNSIDE, AMBROSE EVERETT. Born at Liberty, Indiana, May 23, 1824;

captured Roanoke Island and Newbern, February-March, 1862; fought at

Antietam, September 17, 1862; commanded Army of the Potomac, November

7, 1862-January 26, 1863; defeated at Fredericksburg, December, 1862;

governor of Rhode Island, 1867-69; senator, 1875-81; died at Bristol,

Rhode Island, September 13, 1881.

HOOKER, JOSEPH. Born at Hadley, Massachusetts, November 13, 1814;

graduated at West Point, 1837; served as captain in Mexican war;

brigadier-general, 1861; corps commander at South Mountain, Antietam,

and Fredericksburg; commander of Army of the Potomac, January 25, 1863;

defeated by Lee at Chancellorsville, May 2-3, 1863; relieved of command,

June 27, 1863; served in Chattanooga campaign and with Sherman; died at

Garden City, New York, October 31, 1879.

SHERMAN, WILLIAM TECUMSEH. Born at Lancaster, Ohio, February 8, 1820;

graduated at West Point, 1840; served in California during Mexican war;

colonel in Union army, 1861; brigadier-general, 1861; was at Bull Run

and Shiloh, and made major-general of volunteers, May 1, 1862; served at

Chattanooga and Vicksburg, won battles of Dalton, Resaca, Kenesaw

Mountain, and Peachtree Creek; made major-general in regular army,

August 12, 1864; occupied Atlanta, September 2, 1864; started on march

to the sea, November 12, 1864; entered Savannah, December 21, 1864;

received surrender of Johnston's army, April 26, 1865;

lieutenant-general, 1866; general and commander of the army, 1869;

retired, 1884; died at New York City, February 14, 1891.

SHERIDAN, PHILIP HENRY. Born at Albany, New York, March 6, 1831;

graduated at West Point, 1853; captain, 1861; colonel of cavalry, 1862;

at Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge; commander

of cavalry corps of Army of the Potomac, April, 1864; at Wilderness,

Hawe's Shop and Trevellian; won victories of Winchester, Fisher's Hill,

Cedar Creek, and devastated Shenandoah Valley, 1864; major-general,

November 8, 1864; commanded at Five Forks, March 31, April 1, 1865; took

leading part in pursuit of Lee; lieutenant-general, 1867; succeeded

Sherman as Commander-in-chief, 1883; general, 1888; died at Nonquith,

Massachusetts, August 5, 1888.

THOMAS, GEORGE HENRY. Born in Southampton County, Virginia, July 31,

1816; graduated at West Point, 1840; served in Seminole and Mexican

wars; brigadier-general of volunteers, August, 1861; at Mill Springs,

Perryville and Murfreesboro; became famous for his defense of Union

position at Chickamauga, September 19-20, 1863; with Sherman in Georgia,

1864; defeated Hood at Nashville, December 15-16, 1864; died at San

Francisco, March 28, 1870.

LEE, ROBERT EDWARD. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, January 19,

1807; graduated at West Point, 1829; served with distinction in Mexican

war; superintendent of West Point Academy, 1852-55; commanded forces

which captured John Brown, 1859; resigned commission in United States

Army, April, 1861; appointed major-general of Virginia forces, April,

1861; commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, June 3, 1862;

commanded in Seven Days' Battles, Manassas campaign, at Antietam and

Fredericksburg, 1862; Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, 1863; against

Grant at Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor and Petersburg, 1864-65;

surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, April 9, 1865; president of

Washington College, Lexington, Virginia, 1865-70; died at Lexington,

Virginia, October 12, 1870.

JACKSON, THOMAS JONATHAN. Born at Clarksburg, West Virginia, January 21,

1824; graduated at West Point, 1846; served through Mexican war and

resigned from army, 1851; professor of philosophy and artillery tactics

Virginia Military Institute, 1851-61; joined Confederate army at opening

of Civil War; brigadier-general at Bull Run, July 21, 1861;

major-general, November, 1861; at Winchester, Cross Keys, Gaines's Mill,

Malvern Hill, Cedar Mountain, Harper's Ferry, Antietam and

Fredericksburg, 1862; mortally wounded by his own men at

Chancellorsville, May 2, 1863; died at Chancellorsville, Virginia, May

10, 1863.

JOHNSTON, ALBERT SIDNEY. Born at Washington, Mason County, Kentucky,

February 3, 1803; graduated at West Point, 1826; served in Black Hawk

war, 1832; resigned from army, 1834; enlisted as private in Texan army,

1836; succeeded Felix Houston as commander of Texan army, 1837;

secretary of war for Republic of Texas, 1838-40; served in Mexican war,

1846-47; commanded successful expedition against revolted Mormons in

Utah, 1857; appointed commander of Department of Kentucky and Tennessee

in Confederate service, 1861; attacked Grant's army at Shiloh, April 6,

1862, and killed there while leading his men.

BEAUREGARD, PIERRE GUSTAVE TOUTANT. Born near New Orleans, May 23, 1818;

graduated at West Point, 1838; served with distinction in Mexican war;

superintendent of West Point Academy, 1860-61; resigned to accept

appointment as brigadier-general in Confederate army, 1861; bombarded

and captured Fort Sumter, April 12-14, 1861; commanded at battle of Bull

Bun, July 21, 1861; general, 1861; assumed command of army at Shiloh on

death of Johnston, April 6, 1862; surrendered to Sherman, 1865;

president of New Orleans and Jackson Railroad Company, 1865-70;

adjutant-general of Louisiana, 1878; died at New Orleans, February 20,

1893.

JOHNSTON, JOSEPH ECCLESTON. Born near Farmville, Virginia, February 3,

1807; graduated at West Point, 1829; served in Mexican war, 1846-47;

entered Confederate service as brigadier-general, 1861; took part in

battle of Bull Run, opposed McClellan in Peninsular campaign, fought

battles of Resaca and Dallas against Sherman, and surrendered to Sherman

at Durham Station, North Carolina, April 26, 1865; member of Congress,

1876-78; United States Commissioner of Railways, 1885-89; died at

Washington, D.C., March 21, 1891.

LONGSTREET, JAMES. Born in Edgefield District, South Carolina, January

8, 1821; graduated at West Point, 1842; served in Mexican war, 1846-47;

entered Confederate service as brigadier-general, 1861; promoted

major-general, 1861; was present at second battle of Bull Run, Antietam,

Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Knoxville and the Wilderness; United States

minister to Turkey, 1880-81; United States Commissioner of Pacific

Railroads, 1897; died January 2, 1904.

STUART, JAMES EWELL BROWN. Born in Patrick County, Virginia, February 6,

1833; graduated at West Point, 1854; entered Confederate service, 1861,

and became leading cavalry officer in Army of Northern Virginia; at Bull

Run, Peninsula, Manassas Junction, Antietam, Fredericksburg and

Chancellorsville; mortally wounded at battle of Yellow Tavern, and died

at Richmond, May 12, 1864.

WHEELER, JOSEPH. Born in Augusta, Georgia, September 10, 1836; graduated

at West Point, 1859; entered Confederate army as colonel; at Shiloh,

Green River, Perryville; brigadier-general, 1862; major-general, 1863;

at Murfreesboro, commanded cavalry at Chickamauga, fought Sherman almost

daily on the march to the sea; included in Johnston's surrender, April

26, 1865; member of Congress, from Alabama, 1881-99; appointed

major-general of volunteers, U.S.A., May 4, 1898; in command of cavalry

at Las Guasimas and before Santiago; in Philippine Islands, 1899-1900;

died at Brooklyn, New York, January 25, 1906.

MILES, NELSON APPLETON. Born at Westminster, Massachusetts, August 8,

1839; entered Union army as volunteer, 1861, attaining rank of

major-general of volunteers; enlisted in regular army at close of war,

rising grade by grade to major-general, and commander-in-chief,

1895-1903; conducted campaigns against Geronimo and Natchez, 1886; in

command of United States troops at Chicago strike, 1884;

lieutenant-general, June 6, 1900; retired, August 8, 1903.

* * * * *