is right that they should be made, for it is only
by pointing out the causes of success or failure in military affairs,
as, indeed, in every human undertaking, that we can hope to be
successful. But, in doing so, we need not confine ourselves to one side
of the question; we may look at our enemies as well as at ourselves. Nor
need they be made in a spirit of censoriousness; for the importance of
individuals, in speaking of such great events, may safely be overlooked
without affecting the lesson we would learn. Neither should it be
forgotten that the general who has always fought his battles at the
right time, in the right place, with the proper arms, and pursued his
victories to their utmost attainable results, has yet to appear. He
would, indeed, be an intellectual prodigy.

Such we may suppose to be the reflections of General Barnard, when he
points out the mistakes which were made in the Army of the Potomac while
on the Chickahominy. He does not, indeed, bring to our view the mistakes
of the enemy. That would have been travelling outside of the record in
the report of the operations falling under his supervision, and such
criticism is wisely left for some of the enemy's engineers, or for a
more general history. In speaking of the difficulties of crossing the
Chickahominy immediately after the battle of the thirty-first of May,
General Barnard says,--"There was one way, however, to unite the army on
the other side; it was to take advantage of a victory at Fair Oaks, to
sweep at once the enemy from his position opposite New Bridge, and,
simultaneously, to bring over by the New Bridge our troops of the right
wing, which would then have met with little or no resistance"; and
again, in a more general criticism of the campaign, he says,--"The
repulse of the Rebels at Fair Oaks should have been taken advantage of.
It was one of those 'occasions' which, if not seized, do not repeat
themselves. We now _know_ the state of disorganization and dismay in
which the Rebel army retreated. We now _know_ that it could have been
followed into Richmond. Had it been so, there would have been no
resistance to overcome to bring over our right wing."

But the "occasion" which the morning of the first of June presented of
uniting the two wings of the army, and thus achieving a great victory,
was not seized, because, as General Barnard says, "we did not then know
all that we now do." At the moment when the New Bridge became passable,
8.15,