We cannot too strongly press upon the military authorities at
Montgomery the importance of their early presence in
Virginia.
The battle-ground of this great conflict is to be upon
Virginia soil, and no precaution should be omitted which could contribute to the success of our Southern arms.
It is not to be denied that
Virginia has been taken at great disadvantage in the sudden outbreak of the war. However plain to the vision of many of her citizens might have been the fact that war was imminently impending, yet the large majority of our people, and the public authorities, could not realize, and would not recognize, the danger.
The consequence has been natural.
The war has found us not fully provided with the munitions of war and the appointments of an army, and, what is much more important, without well digested military organization.
The work of organization has had to be perfected exclusively by civilians.
We have a few officers of the late Federal army in the line, and one or two in the staff; but except the latter, the whole military administration and the whole operations of the staff are in the hands of civilians --in the hands of civilians who never saw service, never saw an enemy, and never conceived before of military organization in its scientific aspects, and in its essential importance to the efficiency of an army.
In respect to this matter the
Washington Government has had every advantage of the
South.
It had possession of the most perfect military organization known to the science of war. It had the skeleton of an admirably constructed Army.
It had hundreds of skillful officers, reared to arms in one of the best military schools in the world.
It had munitions of war in vast and inexhaustible profusion, and of every form and fashion of invention.
It had the support of the manufacturing section of the
Union, embracing numerous private armories, superior in many respects to the best public armories of the most warlike powers.
It had still another advantage in the great mass of raw material for soldiers that the stoppage of business had thrown idle upon the public.
It had, moreover, the prestige of the old national flag, and the sanction of constituted authority.
In a world, it had every advantage over
Virginia save that of a good cause — a military organization already in operation, an army already matured in every arm and branch, boundless munitions already provided, arms in profusion, and capacities for multiplying them to infinity, and recruits by the half million.
With all these odds against her, and with all these disadvantages at the start,
Virginia has gone resolutely into the work.
She has accomplished much.
She can now arm thirty to forty thousand men; and but for the want of
military equipments, she could, in a fortnight, put seventy-five thousand of her own troops into the field.
Her great need, however, is military organization.
Her great desideratum is that thorough knowledge of all the details of their business, by the various civilians in charge of her military administration, which is so necessary to promptitude and success in her preparations.
You may have the plan of organization.
The skeleton form may be perfect.
Every commission provided for in the plan may be in the possession of a good man; but if these men lack experience; if they are strangers to the details and routine of a business which must be learned as a trade; your military organization is precisely in the condition of a ship at sea, with a captain ignorant of navigation, with a mate for the first time in his life out of the sight of land, and with a crew who never before saw the ocean, all sea-sick and home-sick.
This is by no means a just picture of the new military organization of
Virginia; but we will say that that organization is in its infancy, that it is in the first month of its existence, and without the efficiency which time and experience confer.
We put an extreme case in order to show where the shoe pinches in our present operations, and to point out what is most needed by
Virginia at the present moment.
We conceive that the presence of the military organization of the
Confederate States, of its able chief officers, of its ample financial resources, of its experience, power and authority, will supply to us precisely that which we now sorely need — almost the only thing that we do need.
It is not men that we want.
It is the arms and equipments which that Government has in supply; it is the discipline and organization that that Government can at once provide.
We need something more: we want the authority of one able, competent, universally-trusted man. We have the raw material, we have the courage, we have the patriotic impulse, all in profusion; we crave only the magic wand of authority, to set all this material in motion, and to charm the whole mass into discipline, order and subordination to one superior will.
We want one commanding mind at the head, who will enjoy the absolute confidence of man and woman, and whose command every heart will leap to obey.
That is what we need in
Virginia at this moment — the obtainment of which brings the supply of everything else besides.
There is a cheering item in the newspapers, promising the early presence amongst us of another important acquisition.
It announces Ben
McCullogh as on his way to
Virginia with a regiment of Rangers.
What a charm is in the names of
McCullogh,
Hays, Chevallie! Would that all three could appear in
Virginia; but that cannot be.
McCullogh, however, is coming, to teach our young men the art of guerilla and partisan warfare.-- Somehow or other we cannot help relying as much upon this mode of defending our soil against the invader as upon regular operations in the field, Certain it is, that thousands of our bravest young men can find employment in this way, who cannot get into the regular service.
Welcome, brave
McCullogh!
