The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1883-04-12
a SCRAP OF HISTORY.

In a recent speech, Jefferson
Davis, ex-president of the Southern
Confederacy, said in substance that
if Generel Albert Sidney Johnston
had lived few minutes longer,
Grants sun would have set beneath
the horizon of defeat and never
appeared again. This is bold Ian
gusge, especially as coming from
one whose light was effectually
snuffed out by the results of the
war. And still Davis, with his er-
ratio disposition in great emergen-
cies, and his almost soul-blndlng
prejudices, is not and never was a
fool or anything remotely resem-
bling one; his honorable reccrd as
al officer in the United States
army, and his illustrious career as
United States Senator from Mlssis-
sippi, point in the opposite d.
rection and show him 20 be man
of enviable attachments, profound
thought and great depth of judg-
ment. In making the statement
referred to, he simply allies himself
to those who hold predeStination to
be the correct theory; for he tacitly
admits that Grants defeat was not
to be because Grant himself was
to be.
1t is a pretty well settled fact
that on the bloody field at
Shiloh, where the military genius
of the two great chieftains was, for
the first time, arrayed on opposite
sides, and the tempest oil battle for
hours yibrated throughout the ma
ton. making it culver and quake in
every part like the leaves of the as
pen in the presence of a mighty
storm, Grant with all his skill and
self-possession, to say nothing of
his splendid and well equipped
army, was driven back inch by inch,
foot by foot, and mile by mile, till
or capture stared him
in the face; his fate seemed posing
in the ascending side of the scales,
with the prospect of imminent ruin
TO himself, his forces and his coun-
Try lowering over the theatre of the
strife like a pail; and at this never
to-be~forgotten moment, the hands
Of the prospective victor were
bound, his triumphant tones were
lushed, and his cleaning blade was
sheathed for ever through tie
agency of a greater and more irwin
chile foe than the little man of des-
tiny in front of ,him-death. What
followed we all know. The leader
ship Of Beauregard, grand
as it always was in some
was not the leadership of
Johnston; the tide Of battle was
urned on the instant; the Con-
had reached aad passed the
pinnacle of its prosperity. Then |
wherein was Davis so far astray, |
,aking all the premises with their
prospective results into consideTa-
Jon and reasoning a, priOrj2 The
world was not. large enough to con-
ain two men like Grant and John |
ston at the same time; the extin-
guishment of one was necessary to
the existence of the other; and the
fates selected the latter as the vic
tim of the occasion.
The ConfederacY was over
thrown, the unity of the Federal
states re-established, and the theory
of local sovereignty forever demol-
ished by the succession of blows
which commenced at Pittsburg
Landing and ended at Appomatox;
but, in contemplating all the facts,
who that calmly weighs and impair
TALLY adjudicates, has the hardihood
to imperiously determine whether
it was the life of Grant or the
death of Johnston that brought
about the contamination? The
Confederate leader has his idea on
the subject, and it may be wrong
but where is the oracle so gifted as
to satisfy our race that it is so?