The plan upon which the war is now carried on by the Federal Government is, undoubtedly, that originally recommended by General Scott, which was the occupation of the Mississippi Valley and the bisection of the remaining portion of the Confederacy through Tennessee and Georgia. We have not before us the letter of General Scott to Lincoln, in which he laid down his plans in detail, but, as far as we can recollect, they correspond substantially with the recent movements of the Federal troops, especially those under General Sherman. The impatience and hot haste of the Federal Government rejected the counsels of General Scott at the beginning, but experience compelled them to adopt, in the end, the programme of Scott, who, they have discovered, is, after all, their greatest general. Vain as a peacock, and an incredible egotist, he has, nevertheless, the most military head in the United States on his tall shoulders.--But though his plan be ever so good, subjugation is by no means certain, for there must be a hand to execute as well as a head to design; and, even with both, the spirit of the country must be subdued before, in such a territory as ours, subjugation is possible.
To General Scott, a son of Virginia, belongs the unenviable glory of every efficient movement which the Federal armies have made for the conquest of his native country. Grant, Sherman & Co., who are the prominent actors in the scene, are but the tools with which the designs of the old chieftain are carried out. They are getting great names, but are no more entitled to the honor, if they accomplish their work, than masons and carpenters to the credit of some grand architectural conception which their hands have simply embodied in stone and wood. We recognize in Wingfield Scott, of Virginia, the military master spirit of the Federal War, and are willing he shall enjoy all the satisfaction he can derive from that admission.
We wonder how the old man, now tottering on the confines of the grave, feels as he thinks of the part he has played in this terrible tragedy. We know that he advised Mr. Lincoln, before giving him his plan for the prosecution of the war, to say to the Seceding States, "Wayward sisters, depart in peace"; and, yet, knowing that this was the course which wisdom and humanity alike dictated, he lent his powerful aid to a course opposed to his own sense of policy and of the true interests of the country, and shaped out the way and manner of striking down to the dust the land that had given him birth, that had nourished and cherished him, and delighted to heap honors upon his head.--It must be a dismal sight, even to his eyes, to see the mother that bore him bleeding at every pore from wounds which his hand has inflicted — to behold such a people as he knows the people of the South to be, trampled into the earth by the hoofs of his hirelings. But she will survive him and his schemes for her destruction. She will come out of this contest with no stain upon her ancestral glories, and will try to forget that she ever bore such a son as Wingfield Scott.
