ritical moments. Lee's devotion to duty and great respect
for obedience seem at times to have made him too subservient to those
charged with the civil government of his country. He carried out too
literally the orders of those whom the Confederate constitution made
his superiors, although he must have known them to be entirely
ignorant of the science of war. He appears to have forgotten that he
was the great revolutionary chief engaged in a great revolutionary
war, that he was no mere leader in a political struggle of parties
carried on within the lines of an old, well-established form of
government. It was very clear to many at the time, as it will be
commonly acknowledged now, that the South could only hope to win under
the rule of a military dictator. If General Washington had had a Mr.
Davis over him, could he have accomplished what he did? It will, I am
sure, be news to many that General Lee was given the command over all
the Confederate armies a month or two only before the final collapse;
and that the military policy of the South was all throughout the war
dictated by Mr. Davis as President of the Confederate States. Lee had
no power to reward soldiers or to promote officers. It was Mr. Davis
who selected the men to command divisions and armies. Is it to be
supposed that Cromwell, King William the Third, Washington, or
Napoleon could have succeeded in the revolutions with which their
names are identified, had they submitted to the will and authority of
a politician as Lee did to Mr. Davis?

Lee was opposed to the final defence of Richmond that was urged upon
him for political, not military, reasons. It was a great strategic
error. General Grant's large army of men was easily fed and its daily
losses easily recruited from a near base; whereas if it had been drawn
far into the interior after the little army with which Lee endeavored
to protect Richmond, its fighting strength would have been largely
reduced by the detachments required to guard a long line of
communications through a hostile country. It is profitless, however,
to speculate upon what might have been, and the military student must
take these campaigns as they were carried out. No fair estimate of Lee
as a general can be made by a simple comparison of what he achieved
with that which Napoleon, Wellington, or Von Moltke accomplished,
unless due allowance is made for the difference in the nature of the
American armies, and of the armies commanded and enco