William Franklin Gore Shanks

“ He is as impetuous as Sherman and as persistent as Thomas. He is cool and collected in the minor matters over which Sherman grows nervous, and fiery and bold in great dangers in which Sherman grows coolest and calmest. Sherman's energy is that of the brain, inspired; Sheridan's that of the blood, inflamed. In history Sheridan will stand forth as a type—a representative leader, even more boldly, if not more prominently, than Sherman, or Thomas, or even Grant. ”

“ Thomas sat down by Scribner, drank his coffee, saw the wound of Scribner, talked of commonplace matters for half an hour, but never by word or act alluded in the slightest way to the fact that he had just fought one of the most important battles of the war, and saved the army from annihilation. No one could have known from Thomas's remarks that a battle had been raging, or that his host had been wounded. ”

“ Has not the South lost more in the destruction of houses, and fences, and railroads, and crops, and other property, and expenditures for munitions of war, etc., in the last four years of a rebellion, carried on for the benefit of slavery, than it wrung out of the sweat of the slave in the forty years preceding? Add to this the half a million of her brave sons who died or were crippled in battle and in camp, half the entire arms-bearing population of the rebel states, and tell me if slavery was a paying institution to them? ”

“ The silence which prevails becomes painful. A command given at one end of the line can be distinctly heard at the other. The men become serious, and are disposed to be gruff. They converse but little, and then in under-tones. They begin to understand what is to be done, that they are to do it, and, without for a moment fearing to test the questions of defeat or victory, they carefully weigh in their own minds the chances, not of life, but of success.
The most remarkable illustration of this peculiarity of veteran troops which I can recall occurred during Sherman's battle at Chattanooga. ”

“ It took half a century of constant and almost universal revolution to produce Napoleon and his prodigies. Only this country, of all the universe, can to-day boast of possessing a general universally conceded to be a great military genius, and it has more than one. The rebellion, which at its outset boasted of commanding nearly all the military talent of the country, produced in the end only one really great soldier—Joseph E. Johnston; all the rest were mediocre—hardly respectable, indeed, if Stonewall Jackson, who was a fair, though unequal counterpart to Sherman, be excepted. ”

“ In the campaign and battle of Chickamauga Thomas was second in command to Rosecrans, but in all its important actions his is the principal figure. The story of Chickamauga has been often, and, in one or two instances, well told; but the whole truth about it must be reserved until time shall permit the historian to tell it without fear or favor. Thomas stands forth the undisputed hero of that day—the single spirit upon whom all depends. He is the central figure. There are no heroes beside him. ”

“ General Sherman's reputation as a soldier must rest entirely on his strategic abilities. His successes were those of strategy only—not of tactics. His faults as a commander are glaring as his faults of character. As an organizer of armies for the field, and as a tactician in battle, he was an utter failure. He never commanded a well-organized army whose discipline did not become relax under his administration, and he was never commander-in-chief in any battle which was not a failure. Instead of being an organizer, Sherman was a disorganizer ”

“ Of all these heroes, however, Rousseau is most naturally a leader. His whole career, civil and military, illustrates him as such; and only in a country of the extent of ours, with such varied and complex interests existing within each other, could any man attain the success with which he has been rewarded, without at the same time gaining such fame as would have made his name as familiar in every home as household words, and invested him with a national reputation. ”

“ Gordon Granger is a rude, rough, and tough soldier, and the confidence of his men was inspired not so much by their knowledge of his ability as of admiration of his bravery. His ability as a director is not great, but he is a good leader of men. Granger is a man without any sense of fear—is more thoroughly indifferent to the dangers of battle than any man I ever remember to have met. ”

“ Every body will remember the Kenesaw Mountain battle and its useless sacrifices, and every body will remember, too, the candor with which Sherman wrote that it was a failure, and that the fault was his. All the minor engagements of his great campaign against Atlanta were either positive defeats or negative advantages, and yet that wonderful campaign was won, and all the advantages which could have under any circumstances accrued from it were gained to us without the losses which a great battle would have caused. ”

“ Thomas believed the late war the triumph of good soldiers over their inferiors—the triumph of numbers, skill, and strength; Howard will tell you, with a flush of feeling and a slight touch of the extravagance of an enthusiast, that it was the triumph of right over wrong. Thomas thinks, with Napoleon, that God sides with the force that has the most cannon; Howard believes, with Bryant, that "the eternal years of God" are truths; and with the Psalmist, that
"Great is truth, and mighty above all things." ”

“ He renders an army invincible more by the impartation to it of his own courage and fire than by any system of organization, and appears to accomplish by this imparted enthusiasm all that results under the leadership of the others from discipline. When the future historian sums up Sheridan's character, with all the facts yet hidden, as they must be for some years to come, laid profusely before him, he will hardly rank Sheridan with those who have carefully and wisely planned. ”

“ On the battle-field where he commands Sherman's nervous manner is toned down. He grates his teeth, and his lips are closed more firmly, giving an expression of greater determination to his countenance. His eyes are somewhat closed, as if endeavoring to see the furthermost limits of the battle-field, and, as it were, peer into the future and see the result. His cigar is always kept firmly between his lips, but he suffers its fire occasionally to die out. He is less restless of body; his arms are more confined to their proper limits; and he is content to stay in one spot. ”

“ Gordon Granger delights in responsibilities. Steedman dares to assume responsibilities which are at times appalling, and does so with so much cool impudence as silences you in astonishment, and such sublime nerve and boldness as hushes you in admiration. He defies argument by the preposterousness of his plans, and silences opposition by the daring with which he executes them. He hesitates at nothing. The magnitude of an undertaking has a charm for him, and he accomplishes great things in the most unexpected of ways. ”

“ Hooker and Rousseau are very different types of the tall and elegant "human form divine," and Logan and Sheridan illustrate the graceful and the graceless in little men; but the great hearts of each beat alike, and on the battle-field the daring and boldness of each are equally conspicuous and effective. ”

“ Politics nor war ever thrust upon the nation a more incompetent leader than William Starke Rosecrans. He had not one of the attributes of generalship. He was neither a strategist nor a tactician, and all he knew of the art of war were its tricks—the tricks that every Indian and all uncivilized nations most excel in. ”

“ The faith of Howard in the principles which he advocated was sublime. I knew of but one other who began the war with loftier purposes of universal good, purer motives of right, justice, and liberty, or truer ideas of the nature of the struggle as a crusade against slavery and ignorance, and he was not a general—only a major of infantry, though a brilliant "first section" graduate at West Point, but worthy ten times over of greater rank than the army could grant. ”

“ The confidence of the fatalist is not necessary to courage. There is a courage superior to the mere indifference to danger, and this quality Grant possesses to the fullest degree. Sherman calls him one of the bravest men he ever saw. His coolness and his clear-headedness under danger and amid excitement is remarkable, and is superior to that of Thomas, who, next to Grant, is the coolest and most clearly administrative man under fire now in the army. ”

“ Hooker has energy equal to Grant, but he has not Grant's patience, stoicism, or imperturbability. He is not content, like Grant, to wait for results. His strength lies in his momentum; Grant's in his weight. It was perhaps because Hooker so nearly resembles him, and because Howard had such opposite characteristics, that Sherman preferred the latter as commander of the Army of the Tennessee. Howard and Hooker have certain qualities in common, but yet are as different in organization as Sherman and Howard. Howard is, like Hooker, a finished gentleman, princely in manners. ”

“ If examination is made into Rousseau's career, it will be found that he has ever been in the front line of battle, not only at Buena Vista, in our miniature contest with Mexico, at Shiloh, Perryville, and Stone River, but in every aspect, and under all circumstances of his career, always ahead, and leading his people in politics as in war. A self-educated and self-made man, of strong intellectual and reasoning powers, quick to resolve and prompt to act, he appears at all times in that noble attitude of one who has led instead of following public sentiment. ”

“ No army of the country was under better control, or committed fewer excesses, than the Army of the East, as the Potomac force should have properly been called. No army committed so many useless excesses as did that of General Sherman, and in none was the discipline so lax, yet no army could be more implicitly trusted in the emergencies of battle than Sherman's Army of the West. ”

“ It is not only with such men as Sherman, Sheridan, Logan, Howard, and others, with whom he bears the most intimate relations, but with his whole army, that Grant is a well-beloved leader. He has gained the universal admiration of his men by no clap-trap display or familiarity at the expense of discipline, but by a constant and watchful care for their interest. It is a boast in the Army of the Tennessee, which Grant commanded in person for nearly three years, that the men never wanted for food; Grant's commissary stores were always well filled. ”

“ It has always been an unfortunate feature of our army organization that there is no provision for the promotion of the deserving in the branch of the service in which they have won distinction, and for which they have evinced high qualifications. A colonel of cavalry shows himself eminently deserving of promotion by his services in that branch, and he is promoted to be brigadier general of infantry, and not only taken from the line of the service for which he is best fitted, but, though promoted in rank, is sent to command an inferior arm of the service. ”

“ The highest aim of the European system is to sink individuality, and to teach the recruit that he is but the fraction of a great machine, to the proper working of which his perfectness in drill and discipline is absolutely necessary. In the United States volunteer army this same system was only partially enforced, and individuality was lost only on the battle-field, and then only so far as was necessary to morale did the man sink into the soldier. ”