The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-01-31

of the movements ofgthe Army of Ten- nessee on and after sunday, May IS, the last of the three days battle of sResacas we shall make mention of the military
 situation generally in the Confed-
 sracy. The present grand strategy of
 President Lincoln. the attempt to hurl
 ali hisf forces in the field against the
 Confederate forces wherever they
 might be found. by concerted action
 Of his commanders was not new. He
 attempted the same movemerit Tn the
 winter of 1s62-3. Then be threw
 Burnside against Lee. at Fredricks-
 burg. RosecFans against Bagg at Mur-
 freesboro. Grant in Northern Missis-
 sippi. and sherman on the Yazoo, against Pemberton at vicksburg. Burn I side, Grant and sherman were de- feated outright, but Rosecrans made lpernaapent Judgement on the battle Held. and the Army of Tennessee re-
 treated. to Tullahoma. After these
 events came, the great battles of 1S63-- ChanceIIorsyi1le and the defeat of
 Hooker. Gettysburg and the drawn. bat. \ tie, Vicksburg, and the surrender of Pemberton, chickamauga and the de- feat of Rosecrans, Knoxville and the Edefeat of Longstreet. Mir. Lincoln was tnot pleased. He severely censured two Fcommahders of his main army. Me-
 CleIlan and Meade. and retired the | former from service. Halleck. with headquarters4 at Washington. had been
 the head of military operations in all this time The President Resolved on
 a change of organization. Congress Ewas induced to revive the grade Of l Lfeutenant-General, which had expired with the Resignation Of Lieutenant-
 General Winfield Scott, ana immedi- ately Major-General Grant received
 the promotion to 1t. The young I4ieu-
 tenant-General was thus placed in
 command Of about 100000 soldiers. The President resolved to trust all to thim. Farragut threatened Mobile from | the sea, but the attack did not come until August; Fort Sumter had been bounded to an impregnable mass Of lruins, but tue bombardmentl still con- | tfnued Fort Pulaski had heen two
 years in possession of the enemy. 1 General Banks led of in the con.
 certed movement under Grant tn the spring of 1864. He started out. from | Alexandria on the Red River with "a.
 splendid army, to drive KiFby Smith from Northern Louisiana. Admiral Por- | ter, in support, started up the Red
 River with a number of Gunboats Gen. eraI Smith was at Shreveport with some | troops, but the main Confederate force, | under Majer-G General Richard Taylor,
 met Banks and the result of two bat
 ties was the disorderly retreat of
 Banks and the escape of Porter from
 great jeopardy from the successful army Taylor says in his antobiog-
 raphy, that Banks and Porter and their
 forces would all have been captured
 in two or three days had not General Smith come upon the field suddenly at might and revoked his orders for pur-
 suit. He insists that he would have
 recaptured Vicksburg, Memphis and
 New Orleans, where there were few | troops, and recovered the entire Mis- l sissippi. Rfyr within the Confederacy,
 had General smith not interfered and
 arrested his movement upon the hee-
 Ing foes. Taylor was modest man,
 withal.-as well as as great soldier. | Why did General Lee allow Grant
 to cross the Rappahannock at several l different lords. without attempting to arrest the crossing? No explanaion
 has been given. Grant was extremely
 apprehensive Of having to fight Lees
 whole army at any one of the lords.
 which he must use to cross his vast
 army and it's supplies to concentrate
 Ut the Wilderness.
 Why did General Jonston not fortify Snake Creek Gap? He wrote a history
 of the Dalton Atlanta campaign, but | he gives no intImation of his neglect
 much less a reason for 1t. Cleburne says in his official report. that riding 1 through this gap, in the rear of the army stiil at Dalton. In company with
 Makall. the Adjutant-General of the
 Army, Makall expressed astonishment l at the open way and exclaimed excit- edly: 'Tt is from gross disobedience
 of ordersw Beyond doubt General Lee
 had a reason for leaving the river
 fords open, and beyond doubt General
 Joh nston had a reason for leaving I Shake Creek Gap open. There Is no study of any feature or incident of | the great war of more absorbing in- | terest than the contemporareoue and
 identical methods Of Lee and Johnston, commanding separate armies hundreds
 of miles apart. It Is oTninous, too,
 that while the operations of the widely | separated armies of the United states were directed by . single mind, the single object of invasion. devastation
 and destrAction, the armies of the Con- federacy had no initiative. Defense against invasion, devastation and de- struction had become the sole motive Of the Confederacy. The methods of Lee and Johnson, at the outset of the campaign of the spring ,of 1864. were
 not only phenomenaIly parallel with
 each other, but they were sufficient to
 fhe life of the Confederacy, There is | kind of password, We wore ourselves
 out whipping them," heard at Confed- | eratef reunoins of our time. The con-
 solatory phrase Is too expressive of
 
 ] Neither Lee nor Johnston would have worn out a Confederate army, in the, | spring of 1864, when each had thekop- portunity to wear out his foe had he been free to execute his conception of the science of war in the premises. The history of wars nowhere presents
 more illustrious demonstration of the
 science of war than in the cotempo-
 raneous and parallel methods of the
 commander of the Army of Northern
 virginias' In action against Grant. and
 the commander of the Army of Ten
 nessee in action against sherman.
 Grant struck Lee at the Wilder
 ness May 5, and foght desperately two
 days Before deciding what he would
 attempt on the 7th, the third day, he
 found Lee prepared and awaiting him behind fortihcations which he knew he could not carry. Thereupon he turn ed Lees right flank. marching as se- cretly as he could. to Spottsylvania Court House. fifteen miles in Lees rear on the road to Richmond.
 sherman having driven in Wh eeler'B picixets from Tunnel Hill, rode up on the eminence and saw with his own
 eyes that he could not carry the fore tihcations Johnston had built in front