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.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the
Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866,
p. 276-8