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.