We have word that Sheridan has had a battle with a part of Lee's army, has captured six Rebel generals and several thousand prisoners. His dispatch intimates the almost certain capture of Lee.
In the closing up of this Rebellion, General Grant has proved himself a man of military talent. Those who have doubted and hesitated must concede him some capacity as a general. Though slow and utterly destitute of genius, his final demonstrations and movements have been masterly. The persistency which he has exhibited is as much to be admired as any quality in his character. He is, however, too regardless of the lives of his men.
It is desirable that Lee should be captured. He, more than any one else, has the confidence of the Rebels, and can, if he escapes, and is weak enough to try and continue hostilities, rally for a time a brigand force in the interior. I can hardly suppose he would do this, but he has shown weakness, and his infidelity to the country which educated, and employed, and paid him shows gross ingratitude. His true course would be to desert the country he has betrayed, and never return.
Memo. This Rebellion which has convulsed the nation for four years, threatened the Union, and caused such sacrifice of blood and treasure may be traced in a great degree to the diseased imagination of certain South Carolina gentlemen, who some thirty and forty years since studied Scott's novels, and fancied themselves cavaliers, imbued with chivalry, a superior class, not born to labor but to command, brave beyond mankind generally, more intellectual, more generous, more hospitable, more liberal than others. Such of their countrymen as did not own slaves, and who labored with their own hands, who depended on their own exertions for a livelihood, who were mechanics, traders, and tillers of the soil, were, in their estimate, inferiors who would not fight, were religious and would not gamble, moral and would not countenance duelling, were serious and minded their own business, economical and thrifty, which was denounced as mean and miserly. Hence the chivalrous Carolinian affected to, and actually did finally, hold the Yankee in contempt. The women caught the infection. They were to be patriotic, Revolutionary matrons and maidens. They admired the bold, dashing, swaggering, licentious, boasting, chivalrous slave-master who told them he wanted to fight the Yankee but could not kick and insult him into a quarrel. And they disdained and despised the pious, peddling, plodding, persevering Yankee who would not drink, and swear, and fight duels.
The speeches and letters of James Hamilton and his associates from 1825 forward will be found impregnated with the romance and poetry of Scott, and they came ultimately to believe themselves a superior and better race, knights of blood and spirit.
Only a war could wipe out this arrogance and folly, which had by party and sectional instrumentalities been disseminated through a large portion of the South. Face to face in battle and in field with these slandered Yankees, they learned their own weakness and misconception of the Yankee character. Without self-assumption of superiority, the Yankee was proved to be as brave, as generous, as humane, as chivalric as the vaunting and superficial Carolinian to say the least. Their ideal, however, in Scott's pages of "Marmion," "Ivanhoe," etc., no more belonged to the Sunny South than to other sections less arrogant and presuming but more industrious and frugal.
On the other hand, the Yankees, and the North generally, underestimated the energy and enduring qualities of the Southern people who were slave-owners. It was believed they were effeminate idlers, living on the toil and labor of others, who themselves could endure no hardship such as is indispensable to soldiers in the field. It was also believed that a civil war would, inevitably, lead to servile insurrection, and that the slave-owners would have their hands full to keep the slaves in subjection after hostilities commenced. Experience has corrected these misconceptions in each section.
