The morning star and Catholic messenger., 1875-12-12

more favorable to his reputation than any
| thing yet stated, for he had no strategic
choice as to his general line of advance on
Atlanta, whilst Grant with a large fleet at
his command and the sea to work from,
might have landed at the outset on the Rich
mOnd peninsula, or the James River before
Petersburg, without any fighting at all.
To be plain, there would be hardly any COM
parison between these two generals if they
were judged by their perfor mances in 1864.
Grants unwearied energy and tenacity in
the Western campaign during the dark
days of the Union cause bad well earned
for him the high place he held. He had
bad the extraordinary merit in general
could be beaten, and so winning back
their confidence in themselves. But a
strong prejudice against the Army of the
Potomac, which, having never served with
he believed had not been boldly enough
handled; a desire to prove his own per
sonal superiority over the great General
whom the Union had learned to dread AID
possibly juet belief that on strategcal
grounds it was necessary at all cost to hold
closely to foe so full of resource and com
bination these may account for his con
duct in the spring of 1864, but they cannot
wholly excuse it, And the proof of Sher-
mans great superiority in the particular
warfare which tested the abilities of both
SO equally was that, although it did take
him some weeks longer to get in sight of
he could, on arriving before it, write con
fidently of the fine spirits of his troops.
and the steady continuance of active op
erations, which would soon place Atlanta
in his hands; while at the very same time
Grant had to sit down before Rich
mond with an army dispiritod by its
losses that it was necessary for it to re
main intrenched aud almost mo ito Il lees for
the next seven months, until famine and
suffering had done their slow work on the
defenders Resting on this years history
viewed singy, Sherman must be pro.
nounced a very master of the art of war in a
close and wooded country, superior by far
to his bolder but lees sagacious chief, and
unmatched anywhere unless it be by Lee
himself, or the General who 30 stoutly op-
posed him."
CHARACTER OF JOHNSTON.
Not less acute and just is Colonel Ches,
ney's estimate of the character of Johnston.
He writes as follows " If men were to be
judged of solely by the difficulties they
overcome, independently of the direct re-
cults achieved, then General Johnston
might fitly head the list of great American
commanders. On his side was neither the
supreme military power welded by Grant,
nor the pest'ge which made Lee almost
independent of those who nominally con
| trOlled him, much less the harmony of
thought and action with his superior that
assisted Sherman from first to last. A die
| tatorial President, puffed up with mistaken
belief in his own military Judgment, and
advised by the very officer whom Johnston
had superseded, was disposed to interfere
with his arrangements and prescribe his
| strategy. His men to whom he came as a
| stranger, were neither attached personally
to their chief, like the Army of Virginiaa
nor improved in discipline to the same de-
gree as their adversaries. His chiefs of
of corps, on one important occasion at
least, at Resaca, seemed to challenge his
| views with that absence of respect for au-
| thority which augared i'll for the endu-
| rance of their men if tested by adversely.
In all these points, therefore, he was at
a striking disadvantage as regarded his
opponent; yet with these against him, and
with but one half the number of the Fed
erals, he contrived to hold them back, led
though they were with such versatile ekill
and unwesried energy as the records of
| modern war can hardly match, for nearly
| two months and half. Surely this is, of
| iteelf sufficient testimony to bis powers of
| leadership. To a sober mind it needs no
argument to show that he was right in re-
| fusiDg to rush wildly forward into Tennes
| see, to suffer such a defeat as the COnfeder-
| ates met before Nashville later in the war,
whom tho State was comparatively stripped
of troops, and Sherman far away and that
he was right in keeping a strict defensive
during the actual campaign seems suffi-
ciently proved by the fatal results that at
lnds of the hard fighting General who so
speedily Fuined it. What he might have
ventuIed had a rasher or less wary COM
mander such as Grant hims elf for instance,
be, before him, is as impossible to say as it
w1uld be to declare what would have
been the result to Lee had Sherman taken
the place of Grant in Virginia. AS things
actually were disposed, it is not too much
| to declare that Johnston's doing what he
did, with the limited means at his COM
mand, is a feat that should leave his name
in the annals of defensive war at
| least as high as Fabius, Turenne or Mo-
reau. The circumstances that
| followed Johnston's supercession have done
moro justice to his reputation than could
library of controversy. The General
selected to succeed him pursued the op-
posite policy and ruined his army and re-
putation by it, and in the last extremity
of the Confederacy he was suddenly called
| from his retirement to take command of
it's poor relics and stay, if it were possible,