Impatience a Bad General.
The very worst counsellors for Generals in the field are an impatient populace. If we are to believe General Scott, the calamity that has recently overwhelmed the grand Yankee army was caused by surrendering his own opinions of policy and obeying the orders of the Yankee mob, headed by Greeley, Blair, and Wilson. The mob, under these doughty commanders, drove him into a battle which was little better than slaughter and ruin.A like impatience prevails among the Southern people for a forward movement upon Washington city. This movement is doubtless in preparation; but we had better leave it to our Generals to choose the time and manner of making it. It is the highest wisdom to profit by an enemy's experience, and it would be as criminal as unheard of, if, after witnessing so signal an instance of ruin from fighting before being ready for it, we should commit the same blunder and run the hazard of the same discomfiture.
What though it might have been possible for our Generals to have entered Washington city upon the heels of the fugitives the other day; does the fact that a feat apparently so improbable and certainly so hazardous might have been performed, condemn the generalship which refused to embark in such a venture? We think not. The army at Manassas is now well ascertained to have numbered less than forty thousand men. Of these, ten to twelve thousand had made a forced march from Winchester, and was almost too exhausted to go into the engagement on the 21st. They fought the battle all that day until night, and came out of it absolutely exhausted and broken down. Were these men physically capable, in that condition, of pursuing a flying enemy twenty-seven miles, and of storming works on the Potomac bristling with artillery and manned by thirty to forty thousand fresh troops? We cannot imagine an enterprise more unpromising, hazardous and chimerical than the attempt of less than forty thousand jaded men to storm works of the formidable character of those about Arlington and the Long Bridge, having seventy thousand men behind them on this side and the other of the Potomac River.
If our Generals had been gifted with prescience superhuman; if they had known the utter confusion and panic with which the enemy were fleeing away; and if they had been able to detect at the distance of twenty-five miles, through the darkness of the night, the momentary defenselessness of the works on the Potomac, they would doubtless have marched forward their twenty or thirty thousand available men, stormed the fortifications of the enemy, and confronted double their number of panic-stricken regiments.--But they did not possess faculties of perception thus penetrating, and of course, not arrogating the part of demi gods, they took the part of Generals. Nothing is more easy than criticism after the event — nothing more difficult than choosing the precise moment for the occasion before the event. If Napoleon had foreseen the remissness of Grouche before the fact, nothing would have been more easy than to provide against it, and nothing more certain than a victory for the French at Waterloo. But even the genius of Bonafate could not penetrate twelve hours into the future, or twelve miles into the distance, and, in consequence, the greatest battle in history was lost by the greatest General the world ever saw.
It is very doubtful whether Johnston and Beauregard would have pursued the enemy to the precincts of Washington on the night of the battle, if they could have known in advance, and at that distance off, of the scenes that were about to transpire on the Potomac; for their little army constituted the sole barrier for Virginia against the invaders; it was undisciplined and unused to rapid movement and was as liable to fall into utter confusion in the pursuit as the enemy was in the flight.-- Rapid movements are very practicable for thoroughly disciplined regulars, like the armies of Napoleon, and are attended with little loss, disorder or hazard. But rapid movements over long distances, amid moments of great excitement, invariably produce great disorder among new and untrained regiments. So far, therefore, from our Generals being liable to unfavorable criticism for failing to push on to Washington on Sunday night, leaving all the outfit of their men behind in the camps, we think they really deserve the laudation of the country.
It is plain, however, that our true policy now is a rapid and vigorous movement upon Washington. Strong reinforcements have been forwarded to Manassas, and our army before that place must now be very strong. We doubt not that our Generals see and appreciate the importance of alacrity and energy even more fully than the public; and as they have done their whole duty heretofore, we have unbounded confidence in their doing it in the present emergency.
That most important movements are going on in the country before Manassas is clear, from the profound secrecy in which our Generals take care to veil them. We shall rest assured that when the denouement comes, the country will have reason to applaud and to rejoice.
