The National tribune., 1885-12-03
In Defense OF the Army OF the Potomac.

To THE EDITOR: 1t was with emotions oi
surprise and regret that perused your very
readable mammoth issue of Oct /, and saw not
an alluson to who recaptured the De Gresse
battery nor which were the gallant. heroic troops
who first entered Columbia 1t was too bad to
cut us off so sudden from that nourishing men
tai diet. 1t makes us Eastern men feel lone
some not to find weekly installment on those
two fresh and interesting topics in the great and
"only trooly" soldiers paper. Is the Western
capacity for making little powder reverberate
muchly on the wane? Has each individual
soldier exhausted his little historical skirmish
and retired behind the intrenchments which
his Imagination has reared? If so it will be in
order for the men of the East to try their men,
tai powers and draw upon their imaginations
to fill in the lapses of their memory.
was greatly amu-ed at the fippant manner
with which Comrade Martin, the man who
"don't like dictionary" slung in the hot shot
at the dudes in language (English); so classical,
you know. Shades of Harvard and its neigh
boring Summer School of Concord Philos-
ophy" protect us from the too too" loud
mouthing of chaotic nothingness; for it
wrenches the intellect in its vain strivings to
catch on to its obtuseness. But never mind
the rhetoric; we can stand that; but when
they begin to slur the grand old Army of
the Potomac, the dander gets up on its ear.
Mr.. Martin, in his twittering, intimates that
q mule team could have drawn off all the
trophies of that army up to the time they
sent us Grant. Let us see. l suppose &C
cording to Western phfaseology, the Eastern
battles, including Antietam and Gettysburg,
were small skirmishes compared to the Western
brigade battles, just let them tell it. The facts
are that the Army of the Potomac confronted
the best-equipped and the best-generaled army
of the Confederacy; that it had Capital at its
rear full of military statesmen and poll
strategists, who were continually intermeddling
with matters they knew very little about. Gen.
Grant is pronounced by those who ought to know
the greatest General of modern times. The facts
that in his "All-Summer campaign" he was
met and repulsed by Lee in every move he
made; that he was e-en forced at the rate of 10
regiments day, and his losses were in about
the same ratio; and that he was about year
in wiping out the poOrly-fed unclothed and
badly diminished Army Of Northern Virginia
go to prove that he had struck much more
formidable snag than he had encountered in
his Western wars.
Well, you ask what all this amounts to? It
proves this: that if Gen. Grant, the most able
commander of modern times, with all the armi les
of the North and all the resources OF the country
in his control was unable to whip the army of
Lee in less than years time, then the Army
of the Potomac must have been grand old
army to have several times repulsed the enemy S
attack under the very shadow of his Capital,
and to have twice driven him across the Poto-
mac when he invaded loyal soil flushed with
past victories. And all this was done in spite
of sad reverses, bad generalship and Washing
ton interference with commanders plans. If
Gen. Grant was great commander, that army
was the superior of any organization of modern
times, and every survivor of it is able to blow
his own horn, in spite of " Western eloquence,"
astrological or orat0rical.
Were it not for trespassing on your space
would say a word in favor of the "elite," as l
travelled with the Sixth Corps and fought under
its old commander (Gen. Sedgwick) in days of
yore, and none of the old boys propose to take
the back seat now as old age creeps on them
apace."-W. s. Goss, Co. A, 7th Mass, Marlboro,
Mass.