Grant's campaign.
The mendacious bulletins of Stanton for a moment misled the mob of the Northern cities, and probably deceived even some of the press. But they never for a moment Jolluded the eyes of cool and calm spectators at a distance to the actual state of the facts. If Grant was uniformly successful, and Lee uniformly defeated, why, they asked, was not Lee's army destroyed and the object of the campaign obtained by the capture of Richmond? If victory has attended on Grant's banner, where are its fruits?--Has a single object of the campaign been accomplished, and if not, what good has resulted to the Federal cause from so much slaughter and so many triumphs, if triumphs they can be called? In this spirit the London Standard denies to Grant all claim to be considered a General. "He is," says that journal, "but an infant in the hands of Lee. His only idea of the science of war is that primitive one of overpowering an enemy by force of superior numbers. He has so many thousands or hundreds of thousands of men placed under his command. His way of utilizing the unhappy raw material is to hurl it against the enemy, regardless altogether of the loss of life.-- As Federal Generals are estimated over there by the magnitude of their achievements in this line, Grant must now be a hero of the first class. McClellan, Pope, and Hooker have slain their thousands, but Grant has slain his tens of thousands. Up to the 11th the Federal report confesses to a loss of 40,000 in seven days--40,000 killed, wounded, and missing. It is difficult to realize the full import of such an admission — the army of Wellington in the Peninsula, the British in the Crimea, the sum total of our countrymen who fought at Waterloo, lost in a week. As Grant's army appears to consist of four divisions, each, at the utmost, of 35,000 men, he must already have been deprived of the aid of one third of his force."* * * "The history of the seven days is a grand exemplification of the maxim that knowledge is power.--From first to last the record of these seven days must be humiliating in the last degree to the Northern commander. He attempts to outnumber his opponent; he is himself outnumbered by a dexterous combination of forces. He gives him battle, and is defeated; his right wing is scattered, his centre broken; two whole brigades of his army captured. He attempts to drive him from his road to Richmond; his opponent, after beating him, takes up, at his leisure, one of the strongest positions in Virginia, and barring the road. He directs one of his Generals to turn the right flank of Lee's army, and finds on a sudden, to his dismay, that his own right flank has been turned, the enemy is behind him, and his baggage and supply train has gone before him to the Confederate capital. He halts for a day to secure his communications. The next thing heard of is a heavy cannonading near Fredericksburg, and it is rumored that the road to Aquia Creek has been interrupted and destroyed. During all this time he loses 40,000 men, among them eight Generals and an immense number of officers. Such a tissue of blunders has not been heard of since the war began. It is confessed by this time that the North has no match for Lee. There is mourning now in New York, but there is joy in Richmond. "Such is a view of this campaign, given by an English newspaper, after having read the Yankee accounts and none other, for so the writer expressly states in the commencement of this article. That the Yankee newspapers did not give half of their losses during that terrible week, it is perfectly reasonable to infer, not only from the Yankee habit of suppressing the truth and suggesting a falsehood upon all occasions when it suits their purpose, but from facts that have since come to light, in spite of every attempt to conceal them. From intelligence received in this city, from a source the perfect authenticity of which it is impossible to doubt, it is known that Grant lost from all causes, previously to crossing James river, 125,000 men, and that but for the reinforcements which Butler and Stanton sent to him, his army would have been literally and absolutely destroyed. These reinforcements amounted to 85,000 men, if the Yankee accounts are to be trusted, so that he was 40,000 men out of pocket when he began his march from Cold Harbor. In the battle of Borodino, the two contending armies in one day, lost an aggregate of probably 90,000 men. But then it was a grand pitched battle, in which the whole force on beth sides was engaged. In the battle of Leipzig, which lasted four days, the aggregate of loss on both sides, was probably as great as the loss of Grant's single army in this campaign of a month. Now these two were the most murderous battles of modern times. In the month which ended with Borodino, the Russian army had lost nothing like the number of men Grant lost in the month ending the 31 of June, 1864. The same may be said of the month ending with the battle of Leipzig. The Russians estimate the loss of Napoleon's army in 1812 at 330,000 men the greater part perishing from the inclemency of the climate. Napoleon, on the contrary, says he lost but 200,000. We shall not stop to inquire which of these statements is true. But it must be observed that the loss, be it what it may have been, to be distributed over a period of five months. No one month can be put in comparison with this bloody month of Grant's. As for the other campaigns of the French revolutionary wars, they scarcely deserve to be named on the same day. All other campaigns, indeed, since the Crusades, sink into bloodless insignificance in comparison with it. We have not the slightest doubt that up to this moment Grant has lost 150,000 men.
In singular contrast have been the losses of Gen. Lee. Since war first became a science we do not believe that in a contest between veterans there was ever so great a contrast with respect to casualties.
