2. There would have been no unwise waste of our precious soldiers. As it was, their very gallantry in our contest with a foe so greatly outnumbering, was made a guaranty of defeat.
3. These magnificent soldiers would have been led always by the best commanders.
These were resources enough, and more than enough, to have won for the south. I often paralleled her neglect to use them with the supineness of the French Commune in 1871. Lassigaray tells us how there were piles of money and money’s worth in the bank deposits and reserves, which could have all been had by mere taking.[119] But the Commune made no use of this great treasure. It surprises one as he reads of it. Then it occurs to him that the new French government was in the hands of men who generally had had no experience in government whatever. It was widely different with the southern confederacy. No other revolutionary government ever started with so little jolt and difficulty. The grooves along which it was to run were all ready. “Confederate States” was instantaneously substituted for “United States” in the constitution, organic federal statutes, and the thoughts of the people, and the administration of the new government seemed to everybody in the south but a continuation of that of the United States. And this new federation was inaugurated by the best-trained statesmen in America. That these men should have overlooked the great resources we have pointed out is a far more strange and wonderful blunder than was that of the raw and inexperienced managers of the Commune. You can explain it only by recognizing it as the accomplishment of fate. Fate put in charge of the fortunes of the confederacy an executive as just as ever was Aristides, and as much respected and confided in by his people. That executive most conscientiously drove out of the public counsels the only men who could have saved the southern cause.
To the foregoing I shall add but a few other instances briefly told.
Grant was at the opening of his career put in a place which taught him the importance of gunboats, and held there until his skill in using them had given him resistless prestige. Beauregard’s failure to make use of the daylight remaining after the fall of Albert S. Johnston seems to have been prompted by the powers who had the future conqueror in charge. Had he been sent against Lee in 1862 or 1863 he would hardly have done better than McClellan, Burnside, or Hooker. Compare how the powers in charge of the Roman empire prevented a too early encounter of Scipio with Hannibal.
Ordinary conduct ought to have captured McClellan instead of driving him to the James. The tone of McClellan’s boasting over the flank movement by which he successfully marched across the entire front of Lee’s army within cannon shot is really that of a man who feels that he has miraculously escaped an unshunnable peril.
The directors sent Stuart astray and hypnotized Lee into believing that Gettysburg was to be another Chancellorsville.
They blinded Davis to the merits of Forrest. Especially to be thought of here is the rejected proposal of the latter to recover the Mississippi shortly after the fall of Vicksburg.
I need not go further. The student of the brothers’ war can add to the foregoing many other favors shown the union cause by the powers in the unseen.
Of course we of the south stood by our side, fighting to the last against increasing odds with the resoluteness of hereditary freemen. In spite of all their potency the powers were often hard pressed by Lee, Jackson, Forrest, and the incomparable valor of the confederate soldiers. These should have some such eternizing epitaph as this: