The first two years of civil strife had closed. The American people,
which so far had shown more aptness at learning than skill in waging
war, may be said to have passed through its apprenticeship in arms.
The broad plan of operations, intelligently but rudely conceived at the
outset by the greater spirits among our commanders, began to be more
clearly grasped. The political strategy of both contestants made
Virginia the field on which the left wing of the Federal armies pivoted,
while the right swung farther and farther south and east, and the
Confederates gallantly struggled for every foot of territory, yielding
only to the inexorable. This right wing had already possession of the
Mississippi as far south as Vicksburg, around which place Grant
was preparing to tighten his coils; it had occupied the line of the
Tennessee River, and had rendered useless to the Confederates the
railroad from Memphis to Chattanooga, which had been the great central
artery between Richmond and the trans-Mississippi States. The Southern
partisans, with Morgan and Forrest as typical chiefs, had up to this
period played, in the West especially, a very important part. They as
much exceeded our cavalry in enterprise as they had advantage over it in
knowledge of the country and in assistance from its population. They
had on more than one occasion tapped the too long and slender lines of
operation of our foremost armies. They had sent Grant to the right-about
from his first march on Vicksburg, thus neutralizing Sherman's
attempt at Chickasaw Bayou. They had compelled Buell to forfeit his
hardly-earned footing, and to fall back from the Tennessee River to
Louisville at the double-quick in order to beat Bragg in the race
towards the gate of the Northern States, which disaster was happily
soon retrieved by the latter's bloody check before Murfreesborough.
Yet, despite these back-sets, the general course of events showed that
Providence remained on the side of the heaviest battalions; and the
spring of 1863 saw our armies extended from the pivot midway between the
rival capitals in a more or less irregular line, and interrupted by the
Alleghany Mountains, to Vicksburg and the Father of Waters.
Great as was the importance of success in Virginia, the Confederates had
appreciated the fact as had not the political soldiers at the head of
the Federal department of war. Our resources always enabled us to keep
more men, and more and better material, on this battle-ground, than the
Confederates could do; but this strength was constantly offset by the
ability of the Southern generals, and their independence of action, as
opposed to the frequent unskilfulness of ours, who were not only never
long in command, but were then tied hand and foot to some ideal plan for
insuring the safety of Washington. The political conditions under which
the Army of the Potomac had so far constantly acted had never allowed it
to do justice to its numbers, mobility, or courage; while Mr. Lincoln,
who actually assumed the powers of commander-in-chief, technically
intrusted to him by the Constitution, was swayed to and fro by his
own fears for the safety of his capital, and by political schemes and
military obtuseness at his elbow.
Whether the tedious delays and deferred success, occasioned by these
circumstances, were not eventually a benefit, in that they enabled the
country to bring forth in the fulness of time the conditions leading to
the extinguishment of slavery, which an earlier close of the war
might not have seen; not to mention the better appreciation by either
combatant of the value of the other, which a struggle to the bitter end
alone could generate,--is a question for the political student. But
it will always remain in doubt whether the practical exhaustion of
the resources of the South was not a condition precedent to ending the
war,--whether, in sooth, the "last ditch" was not actually reached when
Lee surrendered at Appomattox.
In the West, merit had by this time brought to the surface the generals
who later led us to successful victories. Their distance from the
central controlling power resulted in their being let alone to work out
their own salvation. Opposed to them had been some excellent but not the
best of the Confederate leaders; while Virginia boasted the elite of the
Southern troops, the strongest of the captains, and the most daring of
the lieutenants, developed by the war.
Since the Russian campaign of Bonaparte, no such vast forces had been
under arms. To command these required not only the divine military
spark, but hardly-acquired experience. And the mimic war which the
elements of European army life always affords had been wanting to
educate our generals. It is not wonderful, then, that two years of
fruitless campaigning was needed to teach our leaders how to utilize on
such difficult terrain material equally vast in extent and uncouth in
quality. For, however apt the American to learn the trade of war,--or
any other,--it is a moot-point whether his independence of character
is compatible with the perfect soldier, as typified in Friedrich's
regiments, or the Old Guard.
But ability, native or acquired, forced its way to the front; and the
requisite experience was gradually gained, for the school was one where
the trade was quickly taught. Said Gen. Meade on one occasion, "The art
of war must be acquired like any other. Either an officer must learn it
at the academy, or he must learn it by experience in the field. Provided
he has learned it, I don't care whether he is a West-Pointer, or not."
In the East, then, the army had been led by McDowell, McClellan,
Pope, and Burnside, to victory and defeat equally fruitless. The one
experiment so far tried, of giving the Army of the Potomac a leader from
the West, culminating in the disaster of the second Bull Run, was not
apt to be repeated within the year. That soldier of equal merit and
modesty, whom the Army of the Potomac had been gradually educating as
its future and permanent leader, was still unpretentiously commanding a
corps, and learning by the successes and failures of his superiors. And
who shall say that the results accomplished by Grant, Sherman, Thomas,
Sheridan, and Meade, were not largely due to their good fortune in not
being too early thrust to the front? "For," as says Swinton, "it was
inevitable that the first leaders should be sacrificed to the nation's
ignorance of war."
In the South, the signs of exhaustion had not yet become grave. The
conscription act, passed in April, 1862, had kept the ranks full. The
hope of foreign intervention, though distant, was by no means wholly
abandoned. Financial matters had not yet assumed an entirely desperate
complexion. Nor had the belief in the royalty of cotton received its
coup de grace. The vigor and courage of the Confederacy were unabated,
and the unity of parties in the one object of resistance to invasion
doubled its effective strength. Perhaps this moment was the flood-tide
of Southern enthusiasm and confidence; which, after the Pennsylvania
campaign, began to ebb. It is not intended to convey the idea that the
South was prosperous. On the contrary, those who read the signs aright,
saw and predicted its approaching decline. But, as far as its power
of resistance went, it was at its highest when compared with the
momentarily lessened aggressiveness of the North. For the anti-war party
was doing its best to tie the hands of the administration; and, while
this in no wise lessened the flow of men and material to the front, it
produced a grave effect upon the moral strength which our chiefs were
able to infuse into their method of conducting the war.