Nor are we among those who would censure the Government for undue leniency. If democracy has made us a good-natured people, it is a strong argument in its favor, and we need have no fear that the evil passions of men will ever be buried beyond hope of resurrection. We would not have this war end without signal and bitter retribution, and especially for all who have been guilty of deliberate treachery; for that is a kind of baseness that should be extirpated at any cost. If, in moments of impatience, we have wished for something like the rough kingship of Jackson, cooler judgment has convinced us that the strength of democratic institutions will be more triumphantly vindicated by success under an honest Chief Magistrate of average capacity than under a man exceptional, whether by force of character or contempt of precedent.
Is this, then, to be a commonplace war, a prosaic and peddling quarrel about Cotton? Shall there be nothing to enlist enthusiasm or kindle fanaticism? Are we to have no Cause like that for which our English republican ancestors died so gladly on the field, with such dignity on the scaffold?—no Cause that shall give us a hero, who knows but a Cromwell? To our minds, though it may be obscure to Englishmen who look on Lancashire as the centre of the universe, no army was ever enlisted for a nobler service than ours. Not only is it national life and a foremost place among nations that is at stake, but the vital principle of Law itself, the august foundation on which the very possibility of government, above all of self-government, rests as in the hollow of God's own hand. If democracy shall prove itself capable of having raised twenty millions of people to a level of thought where they can appreciate this cardinal truth, and can believe no sacrifice too great for its defence and establishment, then democracy will have vindicated itself beyond all chance of future cavil. Here, we think, is a Cause the experience of whose vicissitudes and the grandeur of whose triumph will be able to give us heroes and statesmen. The Slave-Power must be humbled, must be punished,—so humbled and so punished as to be a warning forever; but Slavery is an evil transient in its cause and its consequences, compared with those which would result from unsettling the faith of a nation in its own manhood, and setting a whole generation of men hopelessly adrift in the formless void of anarchy.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
The Armies of Europe: Comprising Descriptions in Detail of the Military Systems of England, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Sardinia, adapting their Advantages to all Arms of the United States Service; and embodying the Report of Observations in Europe during the Crimean War, as Military Commissioner from the United Stales Government in 1855-56. By GEORGE B. McCLELLAN, Major-General U.S. Army. Originally published under the Direction of the War Department, by Order of Congress. Illustrated with a Fine Steel Portrait and Several Hundred Engravings. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co. 8vo.
It is an interesting study to examine into the causes or motives which have produced military books of the higher order; for we are thus vouchsafed an insight into the writer's genius, and an intelligence of the circumstances amidst which he wrote, and of which he was often an important controller. The Archduke Charles wrote his "Grundsätze der Strategie," etc., as a vindication of his splendid movements in 1796, against the French armies of the Rhine and the Sambre-et-Meuse; and it has remained at once a monument to his achievements and a standard text-book in military science. Marmont, the Marshal Duke of Ragusa, collecting the principles of the art of war from "long and frequent conversations with Napoleon, twenty campaigns, and more than half a century of experience," has given us, in his "Esprit des Institutions Militaires," a condensed view of his own military life, as complete, if not as pleasantly diffuse, as his large volumes of "Mémoires." Jomini, from an extended experience, and a study of the genius of Napoleon, which his Russian position could never induce him to undervalue, has produced those standard works which must always remain the treasure-houses of military knowledge. We admire veracity, but let no soldier confess that he has not read the "Vie Politique et Militaire," and the "Précis de l'Art de la Guerre." But, in all these cases, the litera scripta has been but the closing act,—the signing of the name to History's bead-roll of passing greatness,—the testamentum of the old soldier whose personalty is worth bequeathing to the world.
The work before us, although of great value and present importance, is of a very different character; as a glance at the circumstances which produced it will show. It has, however, we would fondly hope, anticipated for its youthful author a greater success.
In 1855, Mr. Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, sent a military commission to Europe, composed of Major Delafield of the Engineers, Major Mordecai of the Ordnance, and Captain McClellan, just promoted from a Lieutenancy of Engineers to a Captaincy in the Cavalry. Major Delafield was charged with the special subject of Engineering; Major Mordecai with Ordnance and Gunnery; and to Captain McClellan was assigned the duty of a general report upon the Organization of Armies, with a special hearing upon the formation of Infantry and Cavalry. Each of these gentlemen has written a book, and that of McClellan, originally published as a Report to the Secretary of War,—in unmanageable quarto, and at a more unmanageable price,—is now issued, in the volume before us, with the very appropriate title, "The Armies of Europe," and in a convenient form for the eye and the purse.
Whatever of technical value the other reports may have,—and they are, we doubt not, excellent,—McClellan's is the only one of popular interest, the only one of rounded proportions and general importance; and if it also contain much addressed to the professional soldier, it must be remembered that the country is now being educated up to the intelligent perusal of such books.
Travelling in all the principal countries of Europe,—Montesquieu's assertion is now verified, that "only great nations can have large armies,"—the commission met everywhere proper facilities for observation. McClellan made full notes upon the spot, procured all the books of Tactics, Regulations, Military Laws, etc., and provided himself with such models of arms, equipments, saddles, bridles, tents, etc., as were easily transported. Operations of a difficult and laborious character, such as carrying horses on shipboard, are fully demonstrated with diagrams. Marches, manoeuvres, detachments, battles, are fully disclosed. Such investigations, when the French, Italian, or German language was the medium, were comparatively easy; but in order to give a proper comparative view, he was obliged also to study Russian, which he did successfully; by this means he has given us a masterly summary of the Russian system, with its immense battalions, its thousands of military schools, and its Cossack skirmishers, of wonderful endurance and formidable fierceness.
The volume is a complete description in detail of the principal armies, and of wider scope than would be expected; for, while the author has been very full upon the special topics assigned him, which did not include the duties of Engineers and Engineer Troops, it is easy to see everywhere that these latter would intrude themselves with the siren charms of a first love, and nothing but the record could dissolve the spell. Indeed, he urgently recommends to the Government the organization of Engineer troops, specifying their equipments, points of instruction, and duties. In this department, his description of Military Bridges is of great value. Incident to the faithful descriptions contained in the Report, and by far the most valuable feature of the work, we would specify his comments upon all that he saw. They are manly and bold, but raisonnés and just. They give token of that originality of thought which we call genius. The opening chapter on the Crimean War is the only fair critique of that gallant, but mismanaged campaign we remember to have seen. The author's object is to exhibit the movements of both Allies and Russians