ian waters complete; not a
vulnerable spot remained: _totus teres atque rotundus_. His soldiers
reverenced him and had unbounded confidence in him, for he shared all
their privations, and they saw him ever unshaken of fortune. Tender and
protecting love he did not inspire: such love is given to weakness, not
to strength. Not only was he destitute of a vulgar greed for fame, he
would not extend a hand to welcome it when it came unbidden. He was
without ambition, and, like Washington, into whose family connection he
had married, kept duty as his guide.

The strategy by which he openly, to attract attention, reenforced
Jackson in the Valley, to thrust him between McDowell and McClellan at
Cold Harbor, deserves to rank with Marlborough's cross march in Germany
and Napoleon's rapid concentration around Ulm; though his tactical
manoeuvres on the field were inferior to the strategy. His wonderful
defensive campaign in 1864 stands with that of Napoleon in 1813; and the
comparison only fails by an absence of sharp returns to the offensive.
The historian of the Federal Army of the Potomac states (and, as far as
I have seen, uncontradicted) that Grant's army, at second Cold Harbor,
refused to obey the order to attack, so distressed was it by constant
butchery. In such a condition of _morale_ an advance upon it might have
changed history. In truth, the genius of Lee for offensive war had
suffered by a too long service as an engineer. Like Erskine in the House
of Commons, it was not his forte. In both the Antietam and Gettysburg
campaigns he allowed his cavalry to separate from him, and was left
without intelligence of the enemy's movements until he was upon him. In
both, too, his army was widely scattered, and had to be brought into
action by piecemeal. There was an abundance of supplies in the country
immediately around Harper's Ferry, and had he remained concentrated
there, the surrender of Miles would have been advanced, and McClellan
met under favorable conditions. His own report of Gettysburg confesses
his mistakes; for he was of too lofty a nature to seek scapegoats, and
all the rambling accounts of that action I have seen published add but
little to his report. These criticisms are written with unaffected
diffidence; but it is only by studying the campaigns of great commanders
that the art of war can be illustrated.

Nevertheless, from the moment Lee succeeded to the command of the army
in Virginia, he was _facile princeps_