Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1900-09-04
The Blue and Gray.

The Blue and Gray.
In Theodore Roosevelt's Life of
Thomas Benton" on page 38, the au-
thor makes the following comparison
between the Northern and Southern
soldiers during the civil war
The decline of the militant spirit IN
the North was much to be regretted.
To it is due the undoubted inferiority
OF the Northern, compared to the
Southern soldiers. The militant Split
of these last stood them in good stead
in the Civil war. The world has never
seen such good soldiers as those who
followed Lee; and Lee will himself
rank as without any exception the very
greatest of all the great captains that
the English speaking people have
brought forth
In the first place it may be remarked
that Roosevelt went out of his way,
depressed, to say this, in writing Ben
toms life. Benton was not a confederate
soldier. He died in 1855, three years
before the Civil war He acted as aid
to General jackson in the war of 1912,
but it is not recorded that he performed
any signal military service that could
tempt Ills biographer to go into pane
gyries of this sort over the superior
qualities of Southerners as soldiers.
There was, however, a temptation of
another sort; the book was written to
sell in the Southern states.
In the second place Roosevelt, in
writing upon the relative merits of
Northern and Southern soldiers, is at
tempting subject that he really knows
nothing about The writer of this
article was a Northern soldier during
the Civil war. No one can have so
much respect for the Southern soldier
as the Northern soldiers who fought
against them. My respect for the
qualities of the Southern soldiers is
deep and sincere But | know they
were not whit better than the soldiers
from the North, and no one can read
the history of that war and find that
they were better. They had rs much,
but no more bravery. They had some
what more dash, but less GOODNESS, and
less endurance. We had, in gross,
some advantage in numbers, but their
superiority of position, and better
knowledge of the country, and being on
the defense, enabled them to oppose us,
pretty nearly always, with equal, and
sometimes with superior numbers
The military experts of Europe de-
clared, unanimously, that the strateg-
zeal advantages in favor of the South
and yet the North won. In the light
of these facts of history what cause has
Roosevelt for saying that the Northern
soldiers were greatly inferior to those
of the South. Neither does current
history agree with him. There were
both Northern and Southern regiments
in the war for the liberation of Cuba,
and also in the Philippine war Surely
the most that can be truthfully said of
the Southerners in these latter wars is
that they were as good as the Northern
soldiers.
And when Roosevelt says that Gener-
al Lee was not only greater than Grant
but the greatest captain English
speaking people have brought forth, T"
he is just as much mistaken, as he has
been when extolling and lauding his
own military merits. Lee was great
captain; but Grant was greater. Lee
was brilliant; he attempted things
the invasion of Pennsylvania, for in
stance, that Grant, in Lees place,
would have known better than try.
He did this crazy act once, and falling
to learn from experience repeated it
later. In the first attempt Mcclellan
defeated him at Antietam; in the Sec
ond Mead drove him back from Gettys-
burg. These BEETLES were not won by
superior numbers. Lee was brilliant
leader, but he lacked the cool and far
seeing mind that made Grant the
greatest captain of the civil war.