May 27, 1863, The New York Herald
Grant’s three weeks’ brilliant campaign against Vicksburg proves him to be a general of no common order. He is the only Union general now in the field the celerity of whose operations can bear a comparison with the achievements of Napoleon in his campaign in Italy and Germany.
The Southern journals generally attribute his success to the incompetence of Pemberton, while it is whispered in Richmond and elsewhere in the confederacy that the rebel general has sold himself to Grant, and deliberately and willfully made such disposition of his troops as enabled the Union general to defeat the rebel armies in a series of battles. The same stories were told of Tighlman at Fort Henry, and Buckner at Fort Donelson. But the true secret is the superiority of Grant’s generalship, which combines pluck, energy and skill. Some generals possess one of these qualities, while they are wanting in the other two. It is the combination of them that constitutes a good general. From the time that Grant landed on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, covering a period of three weeks, he has fought five battles, in all of which he has been victorious, capturing the capital of the State of Mississippi and closely investing its great strategic stronghold on the river, after first reducing the key thereof – the formidable fortifications of Haines’ Bluff. Contrast with this success the failure of Sherman in the vicinity of the same city, and the failure of Hooker in his attempt to get within striking distance of Richmond, and it will be seen that both suffer severely by the comparison, whatever may be the reputation they have gained for their campaigns against newspapers.
Hooker has had command of an army three or four times the size of Grant’s for the last five months – an army doubling in numbers that of Lee. With far fewer and less formidable obstacles in the way than were presented to Grant, he has not been able during this period to gain an inch in advance of the point at which he assumed the command at the close of the last year. His first attempt to go forward has resulted in the loss of a great battle from sheer lack of generalship and ignorance of the art of war. He divided his strength, left his right flank unprotected and unsupported, allowing it to be turned and driven in, and his whole army routed and forced back behind the Rappahannock, suffering such loss as appears to have postponed indefinitely a renewal of the onward movement to Richmond. So ashamed is Hooker of his case that he deems it indefensible, and to this day he has made no official report of his operations. According to Secretary Stanton, he did not bring into the fight with Lee more than one-third of his men. This was worse than the conduct of Moreau at Hohenlinden, who with twelve divisions managed to bring into action six, and would have lost the battle but for the unexampled carelessness with which the Austrians manoeuvered, and the courage and talent of one of his subordinate generals, Richepanse, who, finding himself surrounded, possessed himself, by a bold movement, of one hundred pieces of Austrian cannon while passing over a causeway. Hooker fights with one-third his force; Grant fights with the whole. One of the first principles of generalship is to bring all your force to bear against the enemy, and, if possible, against a portion of his force, or against the point at which he is weakest. In the late battle on the Rappahannock the generalship was all on the side of the rebels.
While Hooker played the part of the Austrian General Alvinzy, at Rivoli, Lee played the role of Napoleon on the same field. Napoleon had Wurmser, another Austrian general, besieged in Mantua with a garrison of twenty thousand men, of whom at least twelve thousand were armed. At Rivoli, on the Upper Adige, he had Joubert, with ten thousand men, watching the enemy. On the Lower Adige he left ten thousand for the same purpose and to guard the approaches to Mantua in that direction. He was at Verona himself when he learned that Alvinzy was marching against Rivoli with sixty thousand men, and Provera was at the same time moving on the Lower Adige, with nearly twenty thousand men, to effect a junction with Alvinzy and raise the siege. If Napoleon had waited till those armies united, they would have numbered nearly one hundred thousand – two or three to his one. He had only twenty thousand at Verona. With a part of these he hastened to the aid of Joubert, at Rivoli, and the balance he disposed in strategic positions in the vicinity, so as to render the approaching battle with the larger force decisive. The enemy divided his force into three bodies. One of them had little or no connection with the main battle, and was posted on the opposite side of the river, playing at long taw against the French troops, but doing little damage. With the remainder Alvinzy attempted to surround and bag Napoleon’s force, on the anaconda principle. Bonaparte, posted on a plateau, very quietly awaited the development of the enemy’s plan, and permitted him to divide his force and surround him. In this position Napoleon saw he could prevent a junction of the enemy’s divisions, and, though numbering only sixteen thousand, and surrounded by a foe of forty-five thousand, he outnumbered each of several body of troops, and attacking each separately, defeated the whole with great slaughter. He then moved rapidly to the Lower Adige, where Augereau was in danger of being overwhelmed by Provera and the garrison of Mantua, under Wurmser, which had sallied out. Provera was captured, with his army, and Wurmser, driven back to the stronghold of Mantua, had no alternative left but to surrender.
Thus in three days Napoleon destroyed an Austrian army numbering more than double his own and captured the famous fortress of Mantua. Massena’s division, like Stonewall Jackson’s near Fredericksburg and Grant’s in the rear of Vicksburg, never ceased, night and day, marching or fighting, for four days. Well might Napoleon boast on this occasion that he had equalled the celerity of Caesar, and that, though the Austrians manoeuvered well, he beat them because they failed to calculate the value of minutes. The generalship of Hooker was inferior even to that of Alvinzy. On the other hand Grant’s generalship has a touch of the Napoleonic in it, and the completeness of the parallel only fails because his army out numbered the rebels in every battle, though not to a greater extent than Hooker’s outnumbered Lee’s army on the Rappahannock.
He might say, with Caesar, “Veni, vidi, vici”– “I have come, I have seen, I have conquered,” Under such a man as Grant our troops will fight infinitely better than they will under an inferior commander.
Now it so happens that Grant is one of the so-called slavery” generals constantly denounced by the Tribune and the other radical journals for the last two years as sympathizing with the Southern States, and being the chief cause of the failure of the war, while Hooker has been lauded to the skies as a man after their own hearts. His opinions being all right on the negro question, it was concluded his generalship was faultless, and that he would march straight into Richmond without halting. Grant, and the other generals who had the same political faith, have been regarded as little less than traitors by the abolition presses. But we hope Hooker, inspired by the example of Grant, will now at last do something worthy of his old reputation as “Fighting Joe,” Now is the time for him to strike a blow while the rebels are staggering and disheartened under the blows of Grant. If he waits till Lee is fully reinforced from the reserves in the camps of instruction and from the other rebel armies, south and west of him, the fate of Pope will be sure to overtake him, and the cry of “Washington in danger” will be again heard throughout the land – this time, perhaps, with good reason. Those who have hitherto scoffed at this peril may find when too late that the cry of “in the fable is realized at last in the federal capital.