The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-02-21
THE ARMY OF TENNESSEE
NaanhsE la.


 A distinguished educator of Alabama in public comment congratulated the schools upon the reduction of space given to war and battles. In a more recent text book on history. There are ever more and more esnphasized evidences of the axiom that ''ail life is . battle" nevertheless. Life is bat goes on. new conditions arise to call advancing energies of mind and spirit into the exigencies of existence. Not only Is 1t true that the individual must obtain . living, which is better than the manner of his grandfather, but 1t is also true that the man of today can- not live At all save upon a plane that ia higher and broader than his grand father ever denmed of. The aggregate of population, of forces. of cause and effect, which we. denominate the coun- ery.~ is subject to the same law of pro- cess. 1t Is the Christian law of agf- tation. Agitation Is not peace. So we fworfh the living) is battle. Do we stand in wonder at the wireless telegraph? Or at the air ship1 There 10 hardly an invention of machinery which the armament of the nation does not seize for application to Us own uses, it's own. What is to become or the strategies of the field, with the wireless telegraph reporting to the en- anny the secrets of the general7 If hos- tile air ships are to meet in battle ar- ray. half mile above the solid earth, how incalculable the destructive eff. fects of the debfis of the collision upon all below.
 No enterprise of the civilization of the nineteenth century was so essenti- ally Christian in it's anirnus as the land and sea warfare of the Southern Con- federacy. We must not forget The masses of the southern people congre- gated for . purpose with arms in their remembered. They and their children have lived up to a different experience from their calculations. then. but to prove that they were then capable of making reaspnebfe calculations, they and their children are at this present time.s amidst conditions not expected. of this mighty and glorious country ana the security of its government. It is idle to say the citizens of the Con- federncy, who fought Its battles. were not entitled 10 govern their country in peace. They are verify great and vir- fact is demonstrated beyond all quib- bling that they were capable without disappointment and it's burdens. It's re- constructions. its abnormalities. We are great enough. part active and part dormant, in the sphere of existing con- ditions to take courage from the re. cords of the Confederacy and take hope for the future. T have but~one lamp by which my. feet are guided, and that is the lamp ofs-4history. know no way of judging the future but by''-- history.
 with the frst three years the fight ing was iaaphazard. MT. Lincoln took advantage of his circumstances. ar army and navy whose daily expenses were making commerce very rich in his country; opportunity to increase army and navy to indefinite numbers from Southern slave plantations and from European populations greedy for land bounties to soldiers who would enlist under his banners. So Mir Lin- coin. iu the spring of 1884, began a systematic employment of all his arr mIes by simultaneous Invasion of the Confederacy.
 To pursue with necessary intelli- gence the story of the retreat of Lee from the wilderness to Petersburg and the retreat of Johnston from Dalton to Atlanta, both beginning in the early days of May, 1884. the student must recognize the remarkable fact of iden- tity of the strategical principle in the two campaigns.
 General Lee was right to have fought May s, and at the Wilderness. though he gained nothing. His losses there were very heavy and were entirely IT, remediable, but had Longstreet not been wounded at q critical moment on the second and last day Grant would have been routed and sent in flight back to Washington and the entire face Of the war changed. (See Long street) Johnston was right to offer