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G. S. Hillard, Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan, Major-General , U. S. Army, Chapter 2: (search)
n particular cases the rule could not always be applied without injustice. Hannibal was defeated by Scipio at Zama, and Napoleon was defeated by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo; but it does not follow that Scipio was a greater general than Hannibal, or the Duke of Wellington than Napoleon. Mexico was taken by a series of rapid and daring movements, and Richmond has not yet been taken; and thus the inference is drawn that, had the latter city been assailed in the same way as the former was, ent in studies connected with his profession. Among other things, he prepared an elaborate lecture upon the campaign of Napoleon in 1812, which was read before a literary society. Of this discourse he thus speaks in a letter to his sister-in-law :--Well, it is over at last; and glad I am of it. I read the last part of my Napoleon paper last night. I have been working hard at it ever since my return, and the ink was hardly dry on the last part when it was read. The affair amounted to one hund
G. S. Hillard, Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan, Major-General , U. S. Army, Chapter 5: (search)
upon him. He was a young man, whose name until recently had been unknown to the public, suddenly set at the head of military operations which extended over a space and were upon a scale to tax the strategical skill and vast organizing genius of Napoleon himself. The Army of the Potomac, which was immediately under him, was ten times larger than any army that had ever been under the command of one man upon the soil of the United States since the Revolution; and the difficulty of commanding armir numbers,--or, in other words, it does not follow that among ten men fit to command ten thousand men there will always be found one fit to command a hundred thousand. Even the Duke of Wellington never led an army of a hundred thousand men. Napoleon was of the opinion that he and the Archduke Charles were the only men in Europe who could manoeuvre one hundred thousand men: he considered it a very difficult thing. --General Heintzelman. （Report on the Conduct of the War, Part I. p. 118.)
G. S. Hillard, Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan, Major-General , U. S. Army, Chapter 13: (search)
manent fortifications should be constructed. The strategist is to the tactician what the architect is to the builder. Blucher and Ney, among others, were instances of men of the most brilliant conduct on the field of battle who had no power of strategy, no capacity of organizing a campaign or of directing the movements of detached bodies of troops so as to bring them to bear upon a given point at the same time. On the other hand, the Archduke Charles, who as a strategist had no rival but Napoleon himself, is thought to have sometimes shown a want of quickness and decision on the field of battle. That General McClellan is capable of planning and organizing a campaign, of designating movements to be executed by others, can be doubted by no man of candid mind who will read his memorandum on the conduct of the war, addressed to the President, and to be found in the fifth chapter of the present work, and his letters of instruction to Generals Halleck, Buell, Sherman, and Butler, contain
Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I., Vi. Slavery under the Constitution. (search)
to the Federalists, and probably doubled or quadrupled in intensity and efficiency. The vigilant and far-seeing Jefferson, always a patriot, and always intensely a partisan, perceived the peril at once to his country and his party, and resolved by a bold stroke to avert it. He determined that Louisiana should be ours, and perceived, in the gathering storm of war, destined so soon to sweep away the fragile frost-work of the recent and unreal peace, a means of bending the astute and selfish Napoleon to his will. Louisiana, so recently and easily reacquired by France, must become a peril and a burden to her upon the outbreak of fresh hostilities with a power so superior in maritime strength as Great Britain. Tamely to surrender it, would be damaging, if not disgraceful; to hold it, would cost a fleet and an army, and the transfer of this fleet and army to a point so distant as the Mexican Gulf was at best a hazardous enterprise. France badly needed money; we needed, or at least covet
Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I., chapter 38 (search)
3,647 Aggregate absent8,404   Total152,051 of October, Gen. McClellan found himself at the head of fully 150,000 men — an army superior in numbers, in intelligence, and in the essential quality of its material, to any ever led into battle by Napoleon, and by far the largest and most effective which had ever been seen on this continent. It was not only far better drilled and fitted for service than that with which Gen. McDowell had advanced to Centerville and Bull Run, but it was better consd dissipated. Is this obstinate fixity, this rooted neglect and waste of the grandest opportunities, explicable? Not by the hypothesis of a constitutional aversion to the shedding of blood — that is, of other men's — on the part of our Young Napoleon; for he was at that moment among the most eager to have our country involved in still another great war, by a refusal, on the part of our Government, to surrender Mason and Slidell. Not even Vallandigham was more belligerent in that direction.
Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume II., chapter 13 (search)
h skirmishing along Beatty's front grew livelier and more determined toward midday; showing that the enemy were gradually creeping up. At noon, a battery opened on our front, while other batteries were seen moving to our left, as if to flank us in that quarter. At 3 P. M., our skirmishers reported that the enemy were throwing down the fences before them, as if making ready to charge; and, before any dispositions could be made to receive them, Breckinridge's entire corps, strengthened by 10 Napoleon 12-pounders, forming three magnificent columns of assault, seemed to emerge from the earth, and, aided by a heavy enfilading fire of Bishop Polk's artillery, toward the center, swept on to the charge. Their strength was overwhelming; and the fire of our first line, consisting of the 51st Ohio, 8th Kentucky, 35th and 78th Indiana, barely sufficed to check their determined and confident advance. In a few minutes, our men gave way in disorder, sweeping the second line with them, or constra
Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume II., chapter 14 (search)
turned to Milliken's Bend; having meantime sent an expedition, under Gen. Gorman and Lt.-Com. Walker, up the White river, which captured Des Are and Duval's Bluff, without resistance. Gen. Grant having reorganized and refitted at Memphis his more immediate command, personally dropped down the Mississippi on a swift steamer and met Jan. 18. McClernand, Sherman, and Porter, near the mouth of White river, on their return from their triumphant incursion into Arkansas, accompanying them to Napoleon, where consultations were held, and a plan of action agreed on. MeClernand's force moved down the Mississippi next day; somewhat impeded by a violent storm; but reached, on the 21st, Young's Point, nine miles above Vicksburg, on the opposite bank, facing the mouth of the Yazoo. Here was the head of the canal projected and partly opened, months before, by Gen. Williams, See page 101. intended to secure a passage up and down the Mississippi for oar vessels, out of the range of the Vicksbu
Colonel Theodore Lyman, With Grant and Meade from the Wilderness to Appomattox (ed. George R. Agassiz), Introduction (search)
ntrast that it offers to the late World War. Still, the contest was titanic for the times; and during the four years of the Civil War there were mustered under the Union Flag over two and three quarter millions This includes re-enlistments and 90-day men. of men. This was a far greater proportional drain on the American youth of that day than the drafts for our recent armies. Nevertheless, in no battle of that war was an army of much over 100,000 men engaged. But one must remember that Napoleon had less than 75,000 men at Waterloo, and that the eighteen miles or so of intrenched line before Petersburg could, in 1865, justly be considered vast. Five years later the Franco-Prussian War taught us to think of battles on a larger scale; while the opening of the century saw Russia and Japan fighting along battle-lines of sixty miles, with armies of half a million. To-day the white races of the world lie panting from a struggle in which armies of millions have wrestled along battle-l
Colonel Theodore Lyman, With Grant and Meade from the Wilderness to Appomattox (ed. George R. Agassiz), I. First months (search)
g was quite a marvel. Then, after a good breakfast, we put them all on horseback (to the great uneasiness of the two Señors) and followed by a great crowd of a Staff (who never can be made to ride, except in the higglety-pigglety style in which Napoleon et ses Marechaux are always represented in the common engravings), we jogged off, raising clouds of red dust, to take a look at some soldiers. . . . El General was highly pleased and kept taking off his bad hat and waving it about. Also he exprorder had not come to fill up the gap that the poltroonery of two of Rosecrans' Corps has made in the western armies. I do believe that we should have beaten them (that's no matter now), for my Chief, though he expressly declares that he is not Napoleon, is a thorough soldier, and a mighty clear-headed man; and one who does not move unless he knows where and how many his men are; where and how many his enemy's men are; and what sort of country he has to go through. I never saw a man in my life
Colonel Theodore Lyman, With Grant and Meade from the Wilderness to Appomattox (ed. George R. Agassiz), chapter 4 (search)
prisoners in our hands. . . . That night our Headquarters were at the Armstrong house. It was a day of general battle, for Warren attacked on the right and Burnside on the left, which kept the enemy from sending reinforcements. You will notice that the army was gradually shifting to the left, having now given up the Po River and Todd's Tavern road. May 16.--Mott's division, that had hitherto behaved so badly, was broken up and put with Birney — a sad record for Hooker's fighting men! Napoleon said that food, clothing, discipline, and arms were one quarter, and morale the other three quarters. You cannot be long midst hard fighting without having this brought home to you. This day was a marked one, for being fine, nearly the whole of it; we have been having a quantity of rain and a fine bit was quite a wonder. There did appear a singular specimen to behold, at my tent, a, J. Bull — a Fusileer — a doctor. Think of an English fusileer surgeon — what a combination! He walked on
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