Marcli 0, 1916. 
LAND A X J) W^A T E R . 
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.— IV. 
Some Lessons to be Learnt from it. 
By John Buchan. 
[Mr. John Buchan concludes to-day the i:;tcrcstin>j, scries 
of articles in which he has been comf^arini; the con- 
ditions oi the North in the American Civil War with 
Creat Britain durini^ the present world stru!:;'^le. He 
has demonstrated how nearly the difficulties -which each 
(iovernment has had to' face have coincided, and he 
sums up the parallel most ably in the final paragraphs 
of this fined article.] 
G 
RANT was the man for the task. That is to say. 
ho could apply the strategic scheme which 
ga\-e the North victory. What was that 
scheme ? 
It was in its elements \ery simple. It was merely 
to use the superior strength of the North in men and wealtli 
and position to crush the Confederacy. The map will 
showthat the Southern States were roughly a quadrilateral, 
bounded by the Potomac, the Mississippi, and the sea. 
One great Confederate 'State, Texas, lay west of the 
]\Iississi]5pi, and Nortli-Wcst Virginia ran up in a long 
peniu'-uia towards Lake Erie, so that it left only an isthmus 
a hundred miles wide between the two partsof the North. 
Tlic fust business of the N-orth was to occupy and hold 
North-West Virginia, and this was done with little trouble. 
The next was to blockade all the sea coast and prevent any 
oversea imports from reaching the South. The third was 
to control the Mississippi line, and so not only cut off 
Texas from the Confederacy but complete the in\'estmeiit 
of tlie Quadrilateral. After that the sides of the Quad- 
rilateral could be pushed in, so that the armies of Lee 
were left with less and less ground to manoeu\'re in and 
draw their supjilies from. 
Tlie North was perfectly conscious of its strength and of 
what nmst be the main lines of its strategy. Strategy 
depends very much upon geography, and geographical 
facts cannot be blinked. But in the use of its strength it 
fimiblcd for many long days. Strength in war, remember, 
is not a thing wliich can be said to exist in the abstract. 
There may be a ))otcntiality of strcngth.but till the strength 
is made actual it is no better than weakness. A country 
may have an enormous population, but unless that popula- 
tion appears in the shape of trained armies in the right 
place it is not an element of strength. It may have 
great wealth, but unless that wealth is used skilfully 
for the p\ir]50ses of war it is not strength. The North 
had tlie jxitentiaiity of strength, but it had to find out how 
to apply it. 
(ine part of the problem was successfully faced from 
the iirst. The Navy was well handled, and the whole 
coast-line of the South was rigorously blockaded. That 
must be set down to the credit of the civilians at \^'ashing- 
ton. LiiKoln broke away from many of the accepted 
])ractices of International law, and he and the Supreme 
Court created precedents which have been of great use to 
us in the present struggle, h'or a people so legally minded 
and so conservative as America that was a remarkable 
performance and sets an instructi^•e example to other 
nations in the same position. The result was that the 
South was pinched from the first and very soon began 
to starve. Prices went up to a crazylevel. Before the 
end of the war coffee was selling at £8 a pound and tea 
at £b. A dinner in an hotel cost fs and a newspaper 
cost 4s. A pair of boots cost /40. Moreover, practically 
all the materials of war came from abroad, and, if it had 
not been that the arsenals of the South were well supplied 
at the start and that great qpantitics of munitions were 
captured from the North in the first victories, the Con- 
federacy must very soon have come to a standrtill through 
sheer lack of material. That par,t of the Northern strength 
was well a]>plied. • ' ' ' 
But it was not enough. The South had to be beaten 
in the field, and it was there that the North fumbled. The 
main strategic objective was clear, but it Js one thing to 
have a clear strategical objective, ,and quite another 
to have a clear strategical plan. The two objects to be 
gained were (i) the capture of Richmond, the Southern 
capital, and (2) the mastery of the Mississippi \-alley. Th<' 
Northern generals, ^I'CloUan and the rest, began with 
the most ingenious plans for the capture of Richmond. 
J5ut they were too ingenious. They dissipattnl their 
strengtii. I'"ive times great armies crossed the Potomac, 
and live times they were driven back by half their numbers. 
In 1862 four armies invaded Virginia and converged on 
Richmond. In three months Lee had routed them all. 
On at least two occasions the North was very near giving 
up the war in despair. It is true that Lee was a man of 
genius, and the fear of his name was worth an army corps, 
but over-elaborate tactics, which do not use adequate'y 
the strength of a people, play into the hands of a man of 
genius. The early Northern commanders all wanted to 
be Napoleons, and thought more about their military repu- 
tations than about beating the enemy, (irant, when he 
came along, thought only of using the gross strength of 
the North in a plain business-like way. The South was so 
situated that it could terribly punish divergence. It was 
operating upon interior lines, and so had the chance of 
striking rapid blows at the widely separated Northern 
armies. Even after Crettysburg, when the bad days haci 
begun, it could i^laj* that game. An instance is Long- 
street's swift dash to the West, which gave him the \'ictory 
of Chickamauga and checked the Federal invasion of 
deorgia. 
The Method of Grant. 
A great strategical plan is generally simple. As an 
example take Moltkc's scheme which won the war of 1870. 
There was no fumbling there. His two great army groups 
had no other object but to concentrate all their might as 
soon as possible on the main forces of the enemj-. The 
North began by flinging away its chances with divergent 
operations and divided cormsels. Then came Grant's 
capture of Vicksburg, which along with the naval opera- 
tions on the lower waters, gave the North the line of the 
Mississippi. It was (irant's greatest military trium|")h, 
and it will always remain an admirable example of that 
most interesting manfeu\Te when a general cuts himself 
loose from his base — a movement which Sherman made 
later in his great march to the sea, and which Lord 
Roberts performed in the South African War. Once the 
line of the Mississippi was won, and (irant was in supreme 
command, the strategic plan of the North was simplified. 
The policy of pressing in the sides of the quadrilateral 
began. Sherman split the Confederacy in two by march- 
ing across Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah, and the 
war zone was thereby narrowed to Virginia and the 
Carolinas. Grant with the Army of the Potomac 
advanced against Richmond. He fought his way into the 
Wilderness, till he was face to face with Lee behind the 
lines of Petersburg. 
Now mark the situation. The South had been 
blockaded for three years. Its soldiers were ragged and 
barefoot, with scanty food, scanty munitions, scanty 
an.esthctics. But they did not give in. Grant did not 
underrate his enemy. He knew that he could not star\'c 
him into surrender, but nmst beat him in the licld. He 
used all his cards for the purpose, and not merely a few. 
For example, he used the command of the sea. With its 
a.ssistance in the 1864 campaign he shifted his base and 
the line of communi^-ations no less than four times within 
two months. By the end of March 1863, he had so weak- 
ened the enemy's man-power that he forced him to. 
evacuate the Petersburg lines. Lee broke loose, but he 
could not get awa\\ The net had closed round him, and on 
April f)th, 1865, the greatest soldier since Napoleon, com- 
manding an army which was reduced to little more than a 
corps, laid down his arms at Appomatox. The North 
had ended the war in the only way by which the I'nion 
could be safeguarded ; it had won a complete and final 
victor\-. 
The Parallel. 
Was the problem of the North altogether unlike our 
own ? In many ways it was different. We arc fighting 
along with strong Allies, We began by possessing the 
rudiments of a military system. \\'e have suffered very 
