the offensive, to traverse once more the familiar Valley, to break once more through the gate of the Potomac, and to insult with the fires of his bivouacs the capital city of his enemy. Reading these things, they will refuse to believe, what we know, that men were found here and now to call this marvelous campaign a retreat.
The truth is that Lee took a real defensive, if at all, only in the
TRENCHES OF PETERSBURG;
was driven to that defensive not by one army nor by many armies in succession, but by the combined force of the armies in his front and in his rear. Vicksburg it was, not Cemetery Hill, which baffled the Army of Northern Virginia; at Nashville and Atlanta, not from the lines of Petersburg came the deadly blows; and the ragged remnant of Appomattox surrendered not to the valor or skill of the men they had so often met and overcome, but to the men they had never seen, and yielded neither to stubborn Grant nor braggart Sheridan, but to the triumphant hosts of Rosecrans, of Thomas and of Sherman.
It is not hard, then, my friends, to see that history will hold Lee to be a great soldier, wise in counsel, patient in preparation, swift in decision, terrible in onset, tenacious of hold, sullen in retreat, a true son of that Berserker race that rushed from the bosom of Europe's darkest age, furious to fight, lovers of battle, destined to sweep away the old world and to mould the modern.
Rightly to estimate his power as commander is not and may never be possible. There is no second term of comparison. He was in a position as novel as were the conditions of a war where the railroad existed, but the highway was not; where telegraphs conveyed orders, yet primeval forests still stood to conceal armies; where concentration was possible at a speed unknown to war before, but where concentration might easily starve itself before it could strike its enemy.
Strange as the material, were the moral conditions of Lee's command. He was hampered by political considerations; he was trammelled by the supreme importance of one city; and, above all, on him was complete responsibility, but never commensurate power. To the integrity of his army—to the morale of half his force—the successful defence of the South and Southwest was essential, and on operations in which he had no voice turned the issue of his campaigns.
Of these things account will yet be taken, let us be sure of that;
