Year: 1864

GRANT AND LEE CoMPARED.-Th New


York World, III reviewing the Virginia
campaign says, with good deal of just
discrimination, of the qualities of the TWO
marked men leading the armies, that thus
far our army has shown more steadiness,
the enemy more mobility. Grant has
been cool and inheXible, Lee fertile and
dashing. The manGuvling in Fridays
battle was all on the side of Lee, who
evinced readiness of resource and an
easy promptitude in the handling of his
troops which reflects credit alike on his
generalship and the never-failing vigor by
which he was chcckmated in all of his
moves. A commander who so many
times during the day hurled a heavy and
concentrated mass of troops against his
foe at distant and unexpected points. with
q suddenness which outstrippcd the coun-
ter concentration by which they were re-
PEELED, and which enabled him to dictate
movements of his adversary, but did not
disclose the points of his own line which
these repeated maSsings must have weak
ened and exposed, has displayed an in
yentiveness in manGuvring and skill
and promptness in execution which prove
him a great master of one branch OF the
military art. On the other hand, Gene
raj Grants great quality (and it is one of
the very highes) is an uncomfortable
tcnacity of purpose. He is q soldier who
cannot be shaken or daunted whose i'm
perturbable coolness cannot be rutfied by
the most unexpected and threatening incl
dents. Instead of losing poise and get
ting into futter when this or that part
of his line seems breaking and about to
give way, he is incapable of believing its
possibility, even though it be taking place
before his eyes. \ General who is made
of this staunch stuff cannot easily be beat
en-. 4 defeat in battle is oftener moral
than physical result; heavy fighting
tends to bring on, one side or the other,
moment of wavering and discouragement;
and then IN army succumbs rather to
these feelings than to physical impossi-
bility of prolonging the contest. If it
fights on with dauntless steadiness, in the
face of discouragement-an still more, if
it can never know the feeling, its superior
morale may prove an overmatch for the
other side, which may be overtaken by
that sudden quailing which is the turning
point of fortune. General Grants dog
ged and indomitable tenacity, and his ut
ter incredulity to the existence of danger,
is an earnest that he will not be discon-
certed by the most unexpected manGuvers,
nor yield, or allow his army to yield,
to a sudden and disastrous surprise
Lee, with his superior readiness and fer
tility, has never given evidence OF this
stubborn and invincible persistence. Ills
is the mobility and dash of the wave; not
the firmness of the rock. His courage,
like the good mans wrath, subsidies with
the going down of the sun. 1t was so at
Antietam; it was so at Gettysburg; it was
so again last Friday, after the great battle
of the Wilderness. In preliminary en-
gagement he is buoyant and hopeful; but
when all his forces have been brought up
and he has handled them like master
through the hours of long day, his over
strained faculties become relaxed after so
much brilliant and fruitless endeayor; las
situde and loss of ardor fill the night
very likely sleepless night-with gloomy
foreboding, and he has no stomach for re-
newing the fight the next day. The more
phlegmatic and imperturbableG Grant, whose
insensibility to danger has not allowed
him to be wrought up to high pitch of
excitement, does not sink into exhaustion
when the days fighting is over, and is
ready to enter on the next days work with
a mind which "bates no jot of heart or
hope" This is matter of mere tempera-
ment; but something akin to it has been
possessed by nearly all the great COM
manders. They have slept soundly on the
night before and the night after the most
momentous battles-a certain indication
that they possessed that strength and
steadiness of the nervous system which
does not, as in the mere man of thought
and genius, wear itself out in sef-cons'lm-
ing excitement,