The statement is probably as fair as the facts in the compiler's possession could make it; yet it is seriously vitiated by the scantiness of those facts. In answer to one question, for example, we are told that "all agree that the colored troops recruited from Free States are superior to those recruited from Slave States." But only two regiments of the latter class appear to have come under Major Brooks's observation at all. One of these was a perfectly raw regiment, which had never had a day's drill when it was placed in the trenches, but which was kept constantly at work there, although an order had been issued forbidding white recruits from being so employed. The other was a regiment composed chiefly of South Carolina conscripts, enlisted in utter disregard of pledges previously given, and of course unwilling soldiers. It was absurd to institute a comparison between these troops and a regiment so well trained and officered as the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts. Longer experience has shown that there is no great choice between the Northern and Southern negro, as military material; and the preferences of an officer will usually depend upon which he has been accustomed to command. Many, certainly, are firm in the conviction that the freed slave makes the best soldier.
In other points the report carries with it some of the needful corrections, at least for a careful reader. For instance, Major Brooks's general summary is, that "the black is more timorous than the white, but is in a corresponding degree more docile and obedient, hence more completely under the control of his commander, and much more influenced by his example." But when we read on the previous page that the white soldiers were allowed to take their arms into the trenches, and that the black soldiers were not, it makes the whole comparison nearly worthless. It is notorious that the presence or absence of manhood in the bravest soldier often seems to be determined by the mere fact that he has a gun in his hand; and had the object been to annihilate all vestige of military pride in the colored troops, it could not have been better planned than by this and other distinctions maintained during a large part of the siege of Charleston. That, while smarting under the double deprivation both of a soldier's duty and of a soldier's pay, they should have so behaved as to merit a report so favorable as that of Major Brooks, is one of the greatest triumphs they have yet achieved. This volume contains the record of what they did. The story of what they underwent is yet to be told; for even of his two famous "orders" General Gillmore judiciously makes no mention here.
Thus mingled, in this superb work, are the points of strength and weakness. It remains only to add that the typographical and artistic execution is an honor to our literature, and adds to the laurels previously won in the same department by the publisher. Where all else is so admirable, it seems a pity to have to lament the absence of an index. The division of the work among several different authors makes this defect peculiarly inconvenient.
General Todleben's History of the Defence of Sebastopol, 1854-5. A Review. By William Howard Russell. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
It does not yet appear whether our great civil war will leave behind it materials for debate as acrimonious as that which has gathered round the affair in the Crimea. If General Butler and Admiral Porter live and thrive, there seems a fair chance that it may. In that case it will be interesting to read how General Todleben, in a parallel case, substitutes the Russian bear for the monkey in the fable, pats each combatant on the shoulder, and presents each with a shell, while extracting for himself the oyster.
Mr. Russell's "Review" is rather a paraphrase and a condensation,—the original work of the Russian General being too costly even for the English market. The task of the English editor is done with his usual spirit, and with all the more zest from an evident enjoyment of finding Mr. Kinglake in the wrong. Between his sympathies as a Briton and his sympathies as a literary man there is sometimes a struggle. But we Americans can do more justice to Mr. Russell than in those days of national innocence when we knew not Mackay and Gallenga and Sala; and it must be admitted that the tone of the present book is manly and impartial.
Kinglake's description of the Battle of the Alma will always remain as one of the masterpieces of literature in its way; but it is noticeable that Todleben entirely ignores some of the historian's most dramatic effects, and also knocks away much of his underpinning by demolishing the reputation of General Kiriakoff, his favorite Russian witness. Kinglake says that Eupatoria was occupied by a small body of English troops, and tells a good story about it: Todleben declares that the Allies occupied it with more than three thousand men and eight field-guns. Kinglake represents Lord Raglan as forcing the French officers, with great difficulty, to disembark the troops at a spot of his own selection: Todleben gives to Canrobert and Martinprey the whole credit of the final choice and of all the arrangements. And so on.
On the side of the Russians, the most interesting points brought out by Todleben are their fearful disadvantage as regarded the armament of the infantry, (these being decimated by the rifles of the Allies long before the Russians were near enough to use their smooth-bores,) and the popular enthusiasm inspired by the war in Russia. "The Czar was aided by the spontaneous contributions of his people. Great supplies were forwarded by private individuals of all that an army could need." "From all parts of the empire persons sent lint, bandages, etc., by post to the army." These are phrases which bring us back to the daily experience of our own vaster struggle.
As respects the Allies, Todleben uniformly credits the French army with more of every military quality than the English, save personal courage alone. From the commanding general to the lowest private, every technical detail of duty seems to have been better done by the French. At the height of the siege, it became "a war of sorties" on the part of the Russians, and Todleben says,—"Apropos of those sorties, it is indispensable to make the remark here, that the French guarded their trenches with much more vigilance, and defended them with incomparably more tenacity, than the English. It frequently happened that our volunteers approached the English trenches without being perceived, and without even firing a single shot, and found the soldiers of the guard sitting in the trench in the most perfect security, far from their firelocks, which were stacked in piles. With the French, matters were quite different. They were always on the qui vive, so that it rarely happened we were able to get near them without having been remarked, and without having to receive beforehand a sharp fire of musketry."
This, however, as Russell remarks, was when the English army was at its lowest condition of neglect; but that simply transfers the indictment to another count. And it is interesting to observe, that Russell's claim for the English army and Todleben's claim for the Russian army come at last to about the same point, namely, that the individual soldier is in each case tough and resolute to the last degree. But this is only the beginning of the merits of the French array, which to individual courage superadds all that organization can attain.