Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee

[48] Little did these young fellows, who marched, bivouacked, fought, and bled side by side on the burning sands of old Mexico, imagine that in less than two decades McDowell would be training his guns on Johnston and Beauregard at first Manassas, while McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, Meade, and Grant would each in turn test the prowess of Lee; nor did their old commander, Scott, dream he was training these young men in practical strategy, grand tactics, and the science of war, in order that they might direct the information thus acquired against each other.

The memory of Winfield Scott has not been securely embalmed in the hearts of the people of the Southern States, because he was a Virginian who did not resign his commission in the United States Army and tender his sword to his native State in 1861. It should be remembered, however, that for over half a century he had fought for the flag and worn the uniform of the army of the United States, and had been permanently partially disabled by wounds. Before his Mexican campaign he had served with distinction from where the Northern lakes are bound in icy fetters, to Florida, the land of sun and flowers, in a great degree losing touch with the citizens of States. In fifty-three years of continuous army service he had developed into a sort of national military machine, and when war began between the States of the North and those of the South he was seventyfive years old. Neither the Indian “Black Hawk,” with his Sacs and Foxes, the Seminoles, the Mexicans, nor the unhappy condition of his own land, greatly disturbed him, for already his vision was fixed “across the river,” and his tent was being erected upon the eternal camping ground. Naturally, he wanted to go to his grave wrapped in the folds of the starry flag he had so long defended. In the North his decision was highly applauded; in the South opinion was divided. In the estimation of some, he should have returned to his mother Commonwealth, for, under their construction of our forms of Government, his first allegiance was due to her. Others, however, heartily concurred in his decision to remain in the North, because “he might have been in the way.” The solemn game of war can only be played