Lee, Jackson and Johnston
were fairly matched by Grant, Sheridan and Sherman.
The Southern leaders, perhaps, showed more dash and vim than the
Northern ones, for they waged a more desperate fight; but both sides
fought with the highest valor, and if the war did not have for the North
the poignant meaning it had for the South, it was because practically
all of its battles were fought on southern soil, and the southern people
saw their fair land devastated. In no instance did the North suffer any
such burning humiliation as that inflicted on the South by Sherman in
his march to the sea; at the close of the war, despite its sacrifice of
blood and treasure, the North was more prosperous than it had been at
the beginning, while the South lay prostrate and ruined. So to the North
the war has receded into the vista of memory, while to the South it is a
wound not yet wholly healed.
* * * * *
There have been no great American soldiers since the Civil War--at
least, there has been no chance for them to prove their greatness, for
there is only one test of a soldier and that is the battlefield. When
George A. Custer was ambushed and his command wiped out by the Sioux in
1876, a wave of sorrow went over the land for the dashing, fair-haired
leader and his devoted men; yet the very fact that he had led his men
into a trap clouded such military reputation as he had gained during the
last years of the war.
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