The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1902-03-07

earlier, and thereby would have mel
Lee with nearly one third of his army
under Jackson away from the field
By that one days delay jackson
reached the field and fought Mcclellan
with the sixty or more guns he hao
captured at Harper's Ferry. Grant
was the ablest and boldest of all our
aggressive generals, while Mcclellan
was the ablest and the most cautious
OF all our military commanders and
avoided aggressive warfare unless in
vited by special advantage.
The military records of Grant and
Mcclellan have been carefully studied
by the people of the country and by
military men abroad. They stand out
distinctly as the great military men ol
our civil conflict, representing two en-
tirely differ mt systems of warfare. II
would have been impossible to trans
form Grant into a defensive general
and it would have been equally impos'
sible to transform Mcclellan into an
aggressive general. Had our condi.
tion been such as to require the severe
outstanding of resources and avoiding
battle excepting when special oppor.
tunity for success was presented
Mcclellan would have been much the
greater of the two for the Union cause.
He was most accomplished strategist
and thoroughly trained soldier, one
whose personal courage could not be
questioned, and his loyalty to his cause
was such that if in the line OF his duty
his life had been demanded for the
safety of his government it would have
been freely given. He was one of the
Durest, most lovable of men, and not
one of our generals approached him as
an organ ger of armies. No one but
Mcclellan could have created the
Army of the Potomac and fitted it for
the field in few months in the fall of
1861, and the impress of his discipline
and thorough training was plainly
manifested in every struggle the Army
of the Potomac had until it was crowned
with final victory at Appomattox.
Mcclellan was universally beloved
by his soldiers, and in all the many
changes made in the Army Of the Po-
tomac no one ever commanded the
affection of the rank and file as he did,
and when the army was driven in con-
fusion by the second battle of Bull
Run into the intrenchmenls at Wash
ington, no other one of our generals
could have taken it in hand and at
once restored its order and discipline
and marched it 10 battle at Antietam.
The chief secret of the devotion of the
army to Mcclellan was the absolute
confidence of the men that he would
not plunge them into needless sacrifice.
The battle of Antietam was one Of the
bloodiest conflicts of the war, but no
part OF the army ever hesitated for a
moment to 60 into the deadliest sstrife
when they knew it was McClellan's
order. Had Grant commanded at An
tietam he would have fought the battle
a day earlier than Mcclellan did, and
the fighting would not have stopped
until Lee had escaped across the Pc.
tomac with the shattered remnants of
his army.
1t was McClellan's misfortune that
the conditions under which the gov
ernment Was placed in our civil war
demanded different methods of warfare
and greater sacrifices of life than he
was prepared to accept. He would
have been a great Confederate general,
where defensive warfare was a neces-
sity and where battle should be given
only where the superior numbers OF
the enemy were neutralized by condi.
tions Had lie been in command the
bloody and fruitless charges made 10y
Grant at Vicksburg and Cold Harbor,
by Sherman at Kenesaw Mountain
and by Burnside at Fredericksburg
would have been unknown in the his.
tory of the war. He was tireless
student of everything relating to war
and he planned and fought every bat
tie strictly in accord with the theories
of military textbooks. His birth and
training were alike against the develop
ment OF aggressive methods. He was
born to fortune, reared in luxury, and
had little of that attrition with the
world that fi.s youth for development
into aggressive men. Had he been q
bare foot alley boy, trained to tag and
marbles and jostling his way in the
world, his splendid abilities, with the
opportunity he had for military cul
ture, would have made him more reli
ant upon himself and less dependen,
upon military theories.
Mcclellan was more distinctly de
fensivc general than any of the leading
military men on either side Of our civil
war, and he would doubtless have
achieved eminent success if he had
been in command of the Confederate
army; but the Union army required
just the opposite qualities in its mill
tary men. They were compelled to
fight aggressively, and in such a wal
only aggressive generals could achieve