The Nation is a mighty good paper, but it ought not to class General N. B. Forrest as “a scout” and “guerrilla.”
General Forrest was named by General Lee, during the last year of the war, as the best soldier that the Civil War had developed.
Forrest was greater than his commanding general at Fort Donelson, at Murfreesborough, and at Chickamauga. He finally swore that he would not obey any more fool orders from blundering superiors, and he struck out for himself. During the short time that he held independent command his achievements, considering his resources, rivalled those of Stonewall Jackson in the Valley Campaign.
Nor should The Nation be too hard upon the West Point officers who followed their native states out of the Union. Justice to those officers requires one to remember that they were taught at West Point that the States had the right to secede from the Union.
If The Nation will consult the text-book from which Generals Lee, Johnston, Beauregard and Wheeler were instructed in Constitutional Law, it will discover that these young officers simply put in practice that which their teachers had taught them to be their right.
The book to which I refer is Rawle’s work upon Constitutional Law.
After General Wheeler had tried so hard to win the heart of the North, don’t you think they might have allowed the Confederate flag to rest upon his folded hands?
That was the flag which he had followed in the storm of actual war. The Cuban business was nothing. It was child’s play, and pitiful child’s play at that. But the Civil War was real, was colossal, rent a continent asunder, and shook the world. It was the Confederate flag which had led Wheeler to his fame. His youth, his first and best, had been given to that; of all the banners on earth none could have been dearer, holier to him than that.