Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1866-03-22

| A Northern Estimate of the Confederate Leaders.
We extract the following from a long review of
lican paper, edited by Colonel Hapne, late of the
United States army
| Let those loyal gentlemen, decples of Mr.. Alb
bott, who worship the character of Bonaparte,
make some consistent homage to the brilliant di-
rectory of Jefferson Davis. Both men of
destiny, and the pere0net of the survivor is by far
the nobler. OF the fallen angels whose dark plu-
mage swept from our Senate Halls, he made the
most courtly adieu. OF all the traitors he was
most entirely in earnest. Of all decision his was
the sagest, the promptest and the most enduring
He, only, of the consprators felt that his quarrel
with the Union irTeconcilable, and stood by
his capital till the last and has yet advised
submission. His captivity has bsen belittled by
none of BOnaparte's querulOusness. Blind, and
gray and wasted, his dominions are narrowed to
a casemate, while the Republic he would overthrow
reaches to the silent oceans.
In Robert E. Lee the same austere Providence,
to purify our repubcanlsm, shattered faith
in traditional responsibility. The heir of Washing
ton went with the rest of the new chivary, and
with ten times the talent Of that great Fabius
crushed the armies of own lesser respectable
ties, till he net in Grant man without pedigree
He was the equal of Wellington in manoeuvring
great bodies of troops upon small interior forces
The Duke at Waterloo fought his whole army
upon o mile and quarter arc ; but Lee, at Cold
u
battle wherever We sought for him. till his whole
force seemed unanswered by the wink of his eye
and every salient that we touched was a corps
While the Notifications of Richmond stand, his
name shall evoke admiration. The art of war is
unacqualnted with any defence SO admirable
Splendid as the triumphs of his engineering
the victories of his infantry were his best monu-
ments. But over the glory of his talent fell a
shadow eternal as his memory-the frown of q
resoiute Democracy whose sacrifice was longer
than his art.
STUART.
[ stood in the cemetery of Hollywood at the
grave of Stuart-a space without shaft He re-
volutionized the cavalry tactics of time, and
was in dash and dissoluteness the Prince Rupert
of the West. Forrest and Stoneman, Morgan and
Grierson Moseby and Fitzpatrick his imita-
tors He inaugurated the grand raid which taught
She ridan the nothingness of distance, and embol-
dened Sherman to tear the continent like pocket
map -,
demonst1 ated i'll feats of romance, like Stuart's,
made them, during the war, the great suggestive
captains. They built the first iron-clad made the
first of the great raides, and under Stonewall Jack
son executed the earliest of the great infantry
marches But the colder adaptability of the North
developed every hint from the South into a per-
feet system. The experiment of the Merrimac has
grown to the Dictator the Dunderberg and tho
Ironsdes The engineering assiduity of Beaure-
| gard, initiated by the North, has marked the
camps of our armies, as if the protecting noun
doubted that any division commander has yet
arisen to rival the splendid infantry genius of Jack
son.
JACKSON.
! AS Lee master of manu.uvre, Jackson was
the great captain of aggressive warfare. He COM
bined the cunning and the boldness of Napoleon.
To cover his great movement by the flank in 1862
he did not hesitate to fight Pope's whole army
with division, and the celebrity of his march up
the Shenandoah, to appear again Oh the field of
Bull Run, only equalled by the energy of his
attack. He moved infantry with the speed of
horse, and having hurled three great commanders
back from the Old Dominion, died before the lus-
tire of its arms had diminished in that flush of
victory when rebellion had assumed, indeed, the
proportions of q nation He was the most repub-
lican of rebels, stern and simple any Roundhead
and this is why We hold his memory greener than
that of his companions whose detection to the Un
ion was augmented by their treason to popular in
stitutions.
There were other personages identified with this
grand historical defence, but these the great
stat1lres-Dayis, Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Beaure-
gard