The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1893-05-11
INCONsPICUOUs AGENCIES.
What Assaults Were CreditabIe and What
Were Unsound in Conception.

Were Unsound in Conception.
EDITOR NATIONAL TRIBUNE: c0mrade
quotes the uusound criticism that there
nothing fair in attacking them before they got
their breastworks finished. and right there he
stops He is not under compulsion to go on.
But wish that someone would try to tell Us
how many lives were lost ~ uusonnd military
criticism. ! knew soldier vino had enlisted
rather late. and who had smelled more powder
at Spanish Fort than elsewhere. He believed
that We might have taken the works by storm
on the first day, losing fewer men than We
actually lost. lie was man of more than
average intelligence. But at home be had
been crammed, as schoolbOys usually are, with
the
Where breathes the foe but falls before Us
literature of the period when round bullets
were sped from grooveless fiutlocks; when
the implements OF labor were costly and so
clumsy that an effective line OF abalis
rarely encountered; when the tactical direc.
ton, " beg of you not to take yourselves quite
off" was as good as half the directions that
were given; when George Washington COM
planned to Braddock that the Regulars would
not fight against quarter of their number Of
determined men.
Even now some prominent writers refuse to
note the changed condition Of warfare. They
intimate that if squares were broken by cavalry
at Waterloo and Talayera, then squares may be
broken again by cavalry.
Grant confessed that he would have found
undue difficulty in getting the lines of con
travsllatiou made at Vicksburg il he lad not
begun by showing the futiiity Of assault
Sherman confessed that he deemed it import
ant at Kenesaw to demonstrate that he would
charge Bayard Taylor tried 10 show what the
Army Of the Potomac ought to have done, Icy
telling what the Swedes did at Nagva; aud
this sort Of stuff commanded public attention
50 tIa <it1T, ii ddla If IN m is{-
mond," "Our brave boys who know no such
word as fear, rush upon them with the bayo-
net" etc.
But at Narva the soldiers wore cumbrous
garb, and their officers drove them into action
with canes. fellow that wanted to find that
brand OF Confederates was at the trouble of
looking twice. Besides, the Confederates had
an ugly trick OF improving their soldiersbip
and when Burnside attempted TO repeat his
Roanoke strategy at Fredericksburg he found
that conditions had changed. The last part Of
war is not like the first part. The descrip-
tion OF troops that Sir William Howe ronted on
Long Island would have JAILED to hold Corn
wallis in Yorktown. The Mexicans were not
the same patry rabbe Of Moline del Rey that
they were at Resaca de la Palma.
The less-noted agencies Of warfare arc often
the more potent. NapoleOn's career Of disaster
began at the lines Of Torres Vedras. England
was by far the foremost manufacturing Nation
of the world, and the industrial equipment
with which slender English force dressed
itself to the task of intrenchng converted the
proioundest calculations Of the worlds might
lest Captains into the waywardness OF a drea N.
1t was largely by inconspicuous agencies that
the American civil war was wrought 10 a con
clusion. j should like to hear more aud more
about this class of agencies, because American
history, like other history, has been mainly
written in a declamatory spirit. ] do not re-
] -. e.
TO- ] used 20 know inst how many we're killed
and wounded At the battle Of Bunker Hill,
hut ] never did know just bow many were
killed, or how many were wounded in the com
pany to which ! belonged, although the cler-
cal work Of making out the papers was accept
ably performed by me- used 10 know Just how
many troops Alexander had, and how many
Darius had at the battle Of Arbela But the
Editor Of TIE NATIoNAL TRIBUNE does not
know and does rot profess 10 be able to fad
out, how many men were engaged at Franklin.
used TO credit the Sccius DeutAtus jargon that
has echoed down the ages
| "of the wounds his body bore
| Each and all had been fs'en before"
THE death wound ON their gallant breasts
The last OF many sc1Ts"---
and all that sort of thing. I know now that
/ a meritoriOus soldier is not unlikely to be hit
| from behind.
! There is half promise that tho question
! who was FIRST in the works shall be hung upon
/ the chestnut tree. Ii that happens, then the
| contributors may turn their attention TO in.
| quiring what assaults were cred,able aud what
! charges, though praiseworihy in execution. were
unsound in conception. Tie inquiry has prac.
/ tical bearing; for we may have another war and
| mutltudes of American lives may bc wasted
| by the fiery rhetoric of the chaps who have
! learned the art Of war from Homer's Iiiad on
from some equally obsolete authority Respect.
! fully T. MoULToN, CO. /, 33d Ill, West
| Fork, Ark.
| Sweet Sympathy.