The Campaign of Chancellorsville | Page 4

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.

III.
HOOKER AND THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.
The unfortunate course of events during the early winter of 1862-63
had resulted in a grievous loss of morale in the Army of the Potomac.
The useless slaughter of Marye's Heights