February 17, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER. 
SOME LESSONS FROM THE AMERICAN 
CIVIL WAR.-I. 
By John Buchan. 
WE have ail been taught that history is philosophy 
teaching by examples, and that if we are to get 
the value of the past we must be quick to seize 
its lessons for the present. But we must set 
about the task cautiouslj', for nothing is easier than to 
mis-read history. We find a fancied resemblance between 
some old event and an incident of to-day, but too often 
the resemblance is trivial and superficial. 
During the summer many honest souls were greatly 
depressed about GallipoH, because they could not get the 
Syracusan E.xpcdition out of their head. That was a 
case where you had an amazingly close surface parallel. 
The chief sea power and the chief democratic power, 
Athens, was at war with Sparta, the chief land power 
and the exponent of oligarchy. Athens, under the 
influence of a brilliant but erratic politician, Alcibiades, 
undertook a divergent operation in the shape of an 
expedition against Syracuse. It was commanded by a 
general who was much under the influence of politicians 
at home, and L^machus, the ablest practical soldier, 
was not listened to. It was an amphibious expedition, 
an attack by a landing force with the support of the navy. 
At first it won some small successes, and then the thing 
fell into a stalemate and the besiegers became the be- 
sieged. Presently a Spartan army, under Gylippus, 
arrived to help the Syracusans. And so matters went 
from bad to worse, till that disasLTous autumn when 
Nicias laid down his arms, and the flower of the youth of 
Athens perished in the quarries. The expedition was the 
death-blow of the Athenian Empire. 
It was very easy -to read modern names into the story 
— Britain, Germany, Turkey ; Mr. Churchill, Sir Ian 
Hamilton, von Mackensen. It was easy, but it was quite 
misleading, for there was no real parallel between the 
two enterprises. Happily the issue of GallipoU has 
stultified the prophets. 
After the brilliant success of the German armies in 
1870 it was the fashion for many years to regard the 
Franco-Prussian war as the most illuminating subject for 
a soldier's study and as the type to which all successful 
campaigns must approximate. The Napoleonic wars were 
neglected as out "of date, and the American Civil War 
was contemptuously dismissed by the German staff as a 
struggle of mobs of skirmishers. The view was scarcely 
sound, for the Franco-Prussian war was by no means the 
only or the most fruitful object tor a soldier's attention. Its 
conditions were abnormal, and, though nothing can 
detract from the merits of Moltke's strategic plan and the 
perfection of his preparations, it was a war in which the 
victors made countless mistakes and followed many 
false doctrines. The surprising success of the German 
invasion was due less to any great brilliance on their part 
than to the hopeless disorganisation of the French. 
During the last twenty years the study of the 
Napoleonic campaigns has come to its own again under 
the guidance of many distinguished French officers, 
such as Colonel Colin. The mihtary student will still 
find in the operations of the greatest of all soldiers the 
most useful guide to his profession. And for British 
soldiers the story of the American Civil War is not less 
important, for it was a war fought under the kind of con- 
ditions which Britain must necessarily face in any great 
struggle. 
I propose in the following notes to collect some of the 
parallels to the present case which we may find in the 
American conflict, and to suggest a few of the lessons to be 
learned from it. You will get little identity as to incidents, 
or striking likenesses as to persons, but in the case of the 
North you will find many of the essential difficulties with 
which Britain was confronted in August, 1914. It is an 
inquiry which should make for encouragement rather 
than for depression, for after every kind of mistake, and 
after a most desperate and heart-breaking struggle, the 
North won a complete victory. 
The causes of the quarrel need not detain us. The 
North stood for the larger civic organism, the nation ; the 
South for the smaller organism, the State. Slavery, 
we know from Lincoln's own words, was not the main 
issue. It was the immediate cause of the conflict, but the 
real causes lay deeper. It is fair to say that the Civil 
War was a genuine conflict of idealisms, of theories of 
Government, each in itself reasonable, and each forming 
the highest allegiance for the men who had been brought 
up under a particular kind of tradition. We may say, 
too, that the ideals of both North and South were neces- 
sary to the creation of a complete national life. Because 
each side stood for no mean cause it was one of the 
cleanest and most chivalrous, as well as one of the most 
heroic campaigns ever fought. The North won and 
deserved to win, for its creed was more in unison with the 
main march of humanity. But there is no honest Ameri- 
can of to-day who would not rejoice to claim kinship with 
the great men who led the Confederate armies. 
Assets of the Combatants. 
The North started with all the advantages but two. 
It had a population of 20,000,000 whites, while the South 
had only a little over 7,000,000. It had the great in- 
dustries, the mineral fields, the big shipbuilding yards. ' 
It had practically all the navy there was. It had great 
wealth, far greater than the South, and was not only 
more self-supporting, but owing to its ships could import 
what it did not produce from overseas. It had all the 
rank and file of the regular army, and four-fifths of the 
oflicers. The South, on the other hand, had few industries 
and few ships. It was mainly agricultural, a land of vast 
estates worked by negro slaves, with only a scanty white 
popvilation. It was poor, in the sense that, if driven back 
upon itself, it had within its own borders only a limited 
number of the necessaries of life and of war. 
I have said that the North had all the advantages 
except two. But these two were vital. They made the 
South triumphant in the first phases of the war, and more 
than once almost gave it the victory. The first was that 
its aristocratic squirearchy could be more easily adapted 
to military organisation and discipline than the Northern 
democracy. The vast majority of its citizens were 
countryfolk who could march and shoot and were better 
natural material for making soldiers from than the towns- 
men of the North. It was a nation, too, of horsemen 
and horse-masters. Obviously such a people, if 
armies have to be improvised, have less to learn than 
men who come from a different kind of environment. 
This advanatge was a real one, but, of course, it was 
terminable. In time the South had to recruit townsmen, 
and the North enrolled the liardy pioneers of the West. 
Besides the townsman when he was trained, made as 
good a soldier as the countryman. 
In the second place, it was the fortune of the South 
to have fighting on its side by far the abler generals. Lee 
and Stonewall Jackson have had few equals in the art of 
war. The North produced many competent soldiers, 
such as Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas, but no 
one of them reaches the small and select brotherhood of 
the greatest captains. If, taking the whole of history, 
you limit that brotherhood to five names, j-ou must 
include Lee ; if you extend it to a score you will scarcely 
include Grant. 
Problem of the North. 
Now wars are won by superior strength — by weight of 
numbers, if the numbers are properly trained and supplied 
and decently led. Military history shows no exceptions 
to this maxim. .'\ splendid genius or some extraordinarv 
initial advantage may give to the weaker side an imme- 
diate victory, which paralyses and disintegrates the 
enemy. But if the enemy refuses to be paralysed, if he 
still fights on, if he develops a stubborn defensive, if he 
