CHAPTER XXII.

MINOR CAMPAIGNS DURING THIS WAR.

THE Whole science of war, according to the elder Napoleon, consists in this, in knowing how to be strongest at the point where the main issue lies. No more important utterance relatively to this science was ever given forth. The immutable condition of knowing how to be strongest at the point referred to, is a prior knowledge of what the main issue is, and where it lies. Here we have the peculiarity which distinguishes great commanders from those of an inferior order. The former intuitively apprehend what the main issue is, where it lies, what combination of forces is requisite to settle that issue, and then determine their arrangements and movements in fixed subordination to the one end under consideration. The latter either mistake the real issue or confound the main with the minor ones, and hence do little or nothing effective. Blucher, for example, saw clearly that the issue of the campaign in Belgium did not lie between Thielman and Grouchy at Wavre, but between Wellington and Buonaparte at Waterloo. Hence the great Prussian commander did not turn back upon Grouchy, but precipitated his main army upon Buonaparte. When Lord Cornwallis concentrated his forces and fortified himself at Yorktown, Washington saw at once that the whole issue of the war lay at that one point, and with that one commander. Cornwallis was accordingly captured, and peace followed, and the independence of the United States was acknowledged. After the War of the Rebellion assumed a definite form, we contended, and in all our communications with the leading minds in Washington so affirmed, that that war had, in reality, but two

issues the army under General Lee, and that of the Confederates in the valley of the Mississippi east of that river; and that the annihilation of these armies, or either of them, would be followed by a speedy collapse of the entire Confederacy. In the judgment of our military authorities, the real issues of the war, as far as they thought of any such questions, lay not at all with the armies of the Confederacy, but with its vast territories, leading cities, seaports, rivers, and strongholds; and hence all military combinations and movements were directed to the settlement of these minor instead of the main issues. When we visited Washington in January 1863, the great issues of the war, as definitely stated by our military authorities, lay in the seaports of the Confederacy and on the Mississippi river, and hence the main direction of the war resources of the nation were determined with reference to two ends-"the plugging-up of the Southern ports," and "the opening of the Mississippi river." We read at that time, before the President and leading members of Congress, a carefully prepared paper, the exclusive object of which was to demonstrate the fact that the issues of that war, as then pending, did not lie in those ports, or on that river, but with the army of General Lee, an army then lying in a most exposed condition at Fredericksburg. To the validity of the argument the President at first fully assented, but was afterwards overpersuaded by the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of War. When General Lee had crossed his army over the Potomac in the summer of 1863, the war had but one issue, and that issue lay with that army in the State of Pennsylvania. That one army captured, and the war was in reality at an end. Nothing could be more manifest. The fact that 20,000 men were transported from Washington to Bridgeport, Tenn., in eight days, demonstrates the deduction that, while more than 30,000 might have been brought from the Carolinas and the vicinity of Fortress Monroe to Gettysburg, a still larger force might have been brought from our great armies at the west to Harrisburg, in time to have taken an effective part in securing the end under consideration. Our Commander-in-Chief, however, saw but one issue in the circumstances, the issue involved in the single question, How can the invading army be got

out of Pennsylvania, and back again upon "the sacred soil" from whence it came? When less than 40,000 men under General Bragg, and nearly 100,000 under General Grant, confronted each other at Chattanooga, the great issue of the war lay then in the immediate presence of our General. He had but to destroy that single army which lay in his immediate presence, an end which he might have accomplished in a few weeks, and the war would have been terminated in three months from that time. The only issue which General Grant then saw was involved in the single question, How could General Bragg be driven from the position he then occupied? When General Sherman raised the siege of Knoxville, a great national issue was presented to him and General Burnside for their settlement, an issue involved in the question whether the enemy present before them should be crushed, or permitted to retire in peace to Virginia. Had that one corps been captured or dispersed, Lee's power would have been broken, and the Confederacy would have received "a deadly wound" which would have ensured its speedy dissolution. When that siege was raised, all issues which presented themselves to Sherman and Burnside's apprehensions were settled, and nothing more was to be done. but for the former to lead his forces back to Chattanooga. The eye of the commander is the eye of the army which he leads. If the vision of that eye is dim, or of a limited compass, that army will be constantly employed in settling issues which determine nothing relatively to the main ends for which the army has being. Here lay the misfortune of our armies and nation, during this war.

From its commencement to its close, our Commandersin-Chief, and for the most part our Generals in immediate command of our great arniies, never knew what the real issues of the war were, or where those issues lay, and consequently never made their campaigns or their victories conducive to the ends for which the armies they commanded had being. We now refer, in the first place, in illustration of the principles above stated, to the various expeditions which were so frequently sent out from New Orleans and vicinity into the interior of Louisiana, and into the State of Texas,-expeditions generally consisting

of from 30,000 to 40,000 men. After the capture of New Orleans, the expulsion of the Confederates from Missouri, and especially after the opening of the Mississippi by the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, none of the real issues of the war lay west of that river. All that was needed to be done, as the event finally demonstrated, was to capture the two armies of the Confederacy east of this river. This being done, the war was ended at once everywhere. In all the expeditions to which I have referred, our forces were defeated. Had they all been successful, however, nothing effective would have been done to bring the war to a termination. Yet so blind were our Commanders-inChief to the real issues of the war, that so late as the spring of 1865, an expedition was planned for the subjugation of the State of Texas,—an expedition to consist of from 60,000 to 80,000 men. Without sending any army at all into that State, the war was, as we shall see hereafter, brought to a close, by diverting one-half of this expedition, leaving the rest to do nothing,-by diverting one-half of this expedition from its intended destination to the point where the real issue of the war did lay. Thus far, my countrymen have honestly supposed that General Grant, by his great military talents and energy, devised and executed the plan by which the war was brought to a close, and that by a sudden final collapse of the Confederacy. It will appear demonstrably evident, before this treatise is completed, that while the war was suddenly and unexpectedly brought to a close, this end was accomplished by an unexpected disposition of the national forces,—a disposition of which he had never formed a conception, a disposition the idea of which, and the duty of ordering which, was brought to his mind by an order from the President; and that at the very time when General Grant received this order, he had planned and was in the very act of carrying into execution the wildest and most absurd scheme that ever danced in the brain of a Commander-in-Chief-a scheme the execution of which would in all probability have led to great national disasters, and without a question would, as General Grant expected, have protracted the war on to the spring of 1866. The nation. has yet to learn how much it owes to the immortal Sumner, as the heaven-appointed medium of communicating to our

then President, and inducing him to adopt, the plan which suspended and reversed that of General Grant, and secured that unexpected disposition of the national forces which led, and that without bloodshed, to the surrender of the armies of Generals Lee and Johnston, and to the sudden termination of the war. We shall suspend our further criticisms upon these absurd, useless, and disastrous expeditions into Western Louisiana, and up the Red River into Texas, until we shall come to speak of that last most absurd and gigantic of all expeditions that ever was planned, and which was in the act of being carried out in the spring of 1865, when a sudden order from the President induced those final dispositions above referred to.

The remarks above made have an obvious application to the various expeditions sent round and landed on the coasts of the Confederate States. These expeditions were too small to make any extended, and but very few permanent, conquests, and everywhere acted as vexatious irritants upon the surface of the Rebellion, provoking the people everywhere to the most determined resistance. As soon, for example, as McClellan became Commander-inChief, instead of employing the vast resources under his control for the settlement of the great issues directly before him, he fixed the attention of the nation upon a contemptible expedition, under General Burnside, around the coasts of North Carolina. This expedition made some seemingly important and extensive conquests in the eastern parts of the State,-conquests which were of no value at all to us, which were maintained at an enormous expense, and were, Newbern and Roanoke Island excepted, almost entirely lost to us, by and during the year 1864. At another time an expedition was sent out which destroyed salt-works in West Bay, near St. Andrew's Sound,-works owned by the Confederate Government and private individuals, and valued at $3,000,000. Expeditions of a similar character were, from time to time, sent around to the coast of Florida, and into the interior of that State, and did sufficient, and no more, damage than to madden the people against the Union cause. These expeditions were so numerous that, had they all been combined into one, and sent to localities where important issues lay, they would