The situation.
Thus far, appearances are greatly in our favour in
Georgia.
General Hood seems to have made himself very acceptable to all classes in the army notwithstanding the general attachment to
General Johnston and the general regret of his removal.
The country has, indeed, great reason to feel satisfied with
General Hood.
He has shown himself to be not only a fighting man, but a man who knows how to fight.
His victory of the 22d was evidently a
stunner to
Sherman; and the lies he wrote about it go a long way to prove it. He states that he lost in that battle — killed, wounded and missing — less than eighteen hundred men; whereas, at the very time,
General Hood had more than two thousand Yankee prisoners in his possession.
Nor have the operations since that day been less spirited or less successful.
For details of them, we refer the reader to the telegraphic column.
From all we have heard of
General Hood, we should judge him to be the very man to infuse spirit into an army.
He is young to hold so large a command, but not too young.
He is eight years older than
Clive was when he commenced his career in
India; seven years older than
Bonaparte was when he took command of the Army of
Italy; and of the same age with
Wolfe when he fell on the plains of Abraham.
It is not age, but military experience, that is needful in a general.
This possessed, the younger the man is, the better.
Nearly all the greatest generals of the world have been young men when they made their first campaigns.
Alexander the
Great was twenty;
Hannibal, twenty-seven; the Great Conde, twenty-two; Charles XII, eighteen, at the opening of their several careers.
There have been others, however, equally distinguished, who commenced later.
Julius Cæsar was forty-two when he began to command in
Gaul;
Wellington was thirty-nine when he took command in
Spain;
Washington was forty-three when he took the
American army in hand;
Marlborough was fifty-three when he took command in
Flanders; and
General Lee was somewhere near the same age when he took the command of the Army of Northern Virginia.
There is no general rule; but
certeris paribus--talent and experience being equal, the younger the man the better for the service.
What
Grant will try next we cannot conceive, though we have no doubt
General Lee understands perfectly well what he intends.
Thus far his failures have been scandalous beyond belief.
But for his navy he would be beaten out of his entrenchments and compelled to surrender in less than a week.
And this it is — this navy of theirs — that has borne hard upon us throughout this war. Outnumbering us, as they do, five to one, we should have beaten them out of the country long ago had we only had a navy equal to theirs.
To the everlasting disgrace of the
Yankee nation, they have not been able to subdue us, with the assistance of our own negroes and half of
Europe, backed by a fleet of 600 vessels of war. Ought not that nation to hang its head in shame?
Could we but get rid of their navy, we should make such short work of them as would astonish all the world.
Grant's army would never have gotten back to
Washington from Cold Harbor had it not been for his fleet.
McClellan's whole force would have been captured but for the same advantage.
