ntage. It will
courageously carry out his plans so long as he has faith in them
himself and has good fortune in their execution. Let doubt arise as
to either of these things and his troops raise the cry "We are
sacrificed," "We are slaughtered uselessly." McClellan's arts of
military popularity were such that his army accepted his estimate of
the enemy, and believed (in the main) that he had shown great
ability in saving them from destruction in a contest at such odds.
They were inclined, therefore, to hold the government at Washington
responsible for sacrificing them by demanding the impossible. Under
such circumstances nothing but a cautious defensive policy could be
popular with officers or men. If McClellan's data were true, he and
they were right. It would have been folly to cross the Potomac and,
with their backs to the river, fight a greatly superior enemy.
Because the data were not true there was no solution for the problem
but to give the army another commander, and painfully to undo the
military education it had for a year been receiving. The process of
disillusion was a slow one. The disasters to Burnside and Hooker
strengthened the error. Meade's standstill after Gettysburg was very
like McClellan's after Antietam, and Mr. Lincoln had to deal with it
in a very similar way. When Grant took command the army expected him
to have a similar fate, and his reputation was treated as of little
worth because he had not yet "met Bobby Lee." His terrible method of
"attrition" was a fearfully costly one, and the flower of that army
was transferred from the active roster to the casualty lists before
the prestige of its enemy was broken. But it was broken, and
Appomattox came at last.

It will not do to say that the Confederate army in Virginia was in
any sense superior to their army in the West. When the superior
force of the National army was systematically applied, General Lee
was reduced to as cautious a defensive in Virginia as was General
Johnston in Georgia. Longstreet and Hood had no better success when
transferred to the West than the men who had never belonged to the
Army of Virginia. In fact, it was with Joseph E. Johnston as his
opponent that McClellan's career was chiefly run. Yet the
Confederate army in the West was broken at Donelson and at
Vicksburg. It was driven from Stone's River to Chattanooga, and from
Missionary Ridge to Atlanta. Its remnant was destroyed at Franklin
and Nashville, and Sherman's Mar