The cause of Grant's failure.
The New York
Herald tells us that but for the interference of Old Abe,
McClellan (the flagged, hunted, kicked and cuffed
McClellan) would have taken
Richmond two years ago; and that but for the same interference now
Grant would have taken it two weeks ago. In both instances according to the
Herald, he was prompted by jealousy of his own
Generals, and the wish to secure his own re-nomination and re-election.
The following paragraph is rich beyond expression, in mortification and chagrin:
"By that act, and later ones of the same nature, he crushed a commander who had the ability to put the rebellion down.
Then we had four commanders who had not that ability, and for whom he had no fear.
Under those commanders matters got to such a desperate shait that Congress was compelled to act, and called
Grant to the command of our armless in that choice the
President could only acquiesce.
But he has already begun term ploy against this General the very tactics by which he prevented the success of our cause under
Gen McClellan, and with what effect the present position of the contest shows.
Had
Gen Grant been left alone, with his simple but admirable plan for the destruction of
Lee's army, he would have put the
James river and the
Valley columns under staunch military men and not under politicians.
With the
Valley column under Bunter, and the
James river column under
Baldy Smith, the work raid out for those columns would have been efficiently done, and the campaign would have been gloriously ended twenty days ago in the rout of
Lee's army.
But the
President forced upon him for the commanders of those columns men of known and proven incompetency; men who, tried many times, have failed always; men without knowledge or common sense, without genius or judgment, without anything whatever but political influence.
As an inevitable consequence, neither column even approached its object; we the result of the desperate fighting on the
Rapidan by their failure, and our cause is still in the balance.
"Only the
President is responsible for this.
He, by anxiously subordinating the cause of the country to his personal advantage, has again deferred our success, and if he is to go on, we see no promise in the future.
Military peplus is useless — the dreadful carnage of a month of battles is useless — if a politician in
Washington may nullify all that is done simply to further a party scheme.
And there is no hope at all for success unless in some way the people can rise in their might and demand that
Gen Grant be left alone with the sole and supreme direction of our armies"
Now we certainly are not partial to
Lincoln or
Butler.
Far from it; we believe that two more depraved scoundrels do not exist, and that if they be allowed to escape from this life without the assistance of the gallows to hasten their journey, a great fraud will have been perpetrated upon justice.--Yet we believe they are both treated very unjustly in the above extract.
Butler could not have done more than he did, nor could
Baldy Smith in his place.
As for
Lincoln, we cannot conceive in what he was wanting upon the occasion.
He sent
Grant 25,000 veterans to repair his losses in
Spotsylvania; at least so said
Stanton, whose telegrams the
Herald takes as a sort of gospel.
He sent him, three weeks ago, 40,000 hundred day men, so Yankee prisoners say, and every body knows that Yankees, whether prisoners or free, always speak the truth.
He sent him twenty thousand of
Butler's army, as soon as
Butler's campaign became a decided failure, so the
Yankee papers say, and they, too, are well known oracles of truth.
He stripped every Yankee city of defenders to send them here to
Grant.
The reinforcements forward d by his direction, according to the estimate above, amounted to 85,000 men, and if the veracious
Yankees are to be trusted, he is still sending them on. What more could he have done, unless he had donned the Scotch cap and cloak and come on to help
Grant himself?
There certainly has been no want of men, if men were everything in war. This State has been invaded by not less than 300,000, according to the estimate of a contemporary, which we take to be not very wide of the truth.
Of these
Grant has had, from time to time, 215,000 in the army which he commands in person.
If he could not take this
one city with all that force, assuredly
Lincoln ought not to bear the blame.
Neither is
Grant to blame.
The Yankee nation, and their newspapers, and their Congress, are to blame far more than
Lincoln, or
Grant, or
Butler.
One year ago
Grant with 85,000 men, shut up
Pemberton, who had already lost 9,000 men in battle against overwhelming odds, with a remnant of 18,000 in the town of
Vicksburg.
After having attempted to carry the works by storm, and having been repulsed with immense slaughter on the 25th of May, he was afraid to try it again.
He drew lines of enormous strength around the city, the horns terminating on the river, where lay one of the most powerful fleets of modern times.
There he lay, receiving reinforcements every day, for six weeks, until the garrison, numbering about one-fifth of his command, and seeing no hope of relief, surrendered.
This was, really, a very small feat; but the
Yankee nation magnified it into a very greet one.
It was necessary to impose on foreign nations, and on the
Yankees themselves, for the
Yankees must always have an idol to worship, and care little what idol it may be.
Fanny Elsler,
Jenny Lind, the woolly horse, Tom Thumb,
Tommy, or the
Prince of
Wales — none of them come amiss, and an equal degree of adoration is bestowed upon each.
If
Grant was placed in this category, it was his misfortune as much as his fault.
His mendacious dispatches had induced the
Yankees to believe that he had achieved successes, the like of which had never been read of in the history of the world.
He cannot blame the
Yankee nation for fixing upon him as the proper instrument to gratuity their ruling passion, by capturing and destroying the "doomed city." He is, in point of fact, a very small man. They put him to execute a service in which
Napoleon or
Wellington would have failed.
It is to the difficulty of this task, not to the want of means, that the failure is to be attributed.
When in the history of the civilized world did any General, below the degree of a sovereign
Prince, ever before command 300,000 men?
The next obstacles to
Grant's success were the genius of
Lee and the invincible courage of his soldiers.
His men were butchered, slaughtered, immolated, after a fashion never known before since the invention of gunpowder, and in return they inflicted upon their adversaries the smallest amount of loss of which there is any account.
The bones of ten thousand slaughtered Yankees yet lie bleaching in the woods and fields of
Spotsylvania.
The loss of
Grant up to this moment must greatly exceed 100,000 men — killed, wounded, and prisoners.
When he arrived at Cold Harbor he was no longer in any condition to fight
Lee, and he did not dare to do it.
Butler and
Lincoln had nothing to do with the immeasurable slaughter of the
Wilderness, of
Spotsylvania, and of Cold Harbor.
It was
Grant's own work, or rather the work of the
Yankee nation, which made a hero and a demigod of him, to gratify their hellish malignity and their childish vanity.
