South throw
away a great moral advantage when it waged aggressive war upon the
North? No doubt it was necessary at first, from the secession
point of view, to "fire the Southern heart" by attacking Fort
Sumter. And, also from that point of view, that attack was fully
justifiable because that fort was in "Confederate" territory. The
invasions of Maryland and Pennsylvania were far different, and much
more so were the relentless guerrilla war waged in the border
States, attended with horrible massacres like that of Lawrence,
Kansas, which, though no one charges them to the government or
generals of the South, were unavoidable incidents of that species
of warfare; and the inhuman cruelties incidentally suffered by
Union prisoners.

It is true that the slavery question was a very powerful factor in
our Civil War, and became more and more so as the war progressed.
But opinion on that question at the North was very far from unanimous
at the first, and it is a fair and important question how far the
growth of sentiment in the free States in favor of emancipation
was due to the slaveholders' method of carrying on the war.

My desire here is to refer to these questions solely from the
military point of view, and for the consideration of military
students. The conditions upon which depends success or failure in
war are so many,--some of them being more or less obscure,--that
careful study of all such conditions is demanded of those who aspire
to become military leaders.

[( 1) See Thomas's despatch of 8 P. M., November 29, to Colonel H.
C. Wharton, Wilson's staff officer: War Records, Vol. XLV, part
I, p. 1146.]

CHAPTER XIII
Grant Orders Thomas to Attack Hood or Relinquish the Command--
Thomas's Corps Commanders Support Him in Delay--Grant's Intentions
in Sending Logan to Relieve Thomas--Change of Plan before the Battle
of Nashville--The Fighting of December 15--Expectation that Hood
would Retreat--Delay in Renewing the Attack on the 16th--Hopelessness
of Hood's Position--Letters to Grant and Sherman--Transferred to
the East--Financial Burden of the War--Thomas's Attitude toward
the War.

The perilous character of the situation in Tennessee, in which it
was left by Sherman's premature start for the sea and Thomas's
tardy concentration of troops, wholly disappeared with the repulse
of Hood at Franklin. There was no further obstacle to the
concentration of Thomas's forces at Nashville, the organization
and equipme