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The common idea seems to be, that the first wanderers to Kentucky were a simple, ignorant, low-bred, good-for-nothing set of fellows, who left the frontiers and sterile places of the old States, where a considerable amount of labor was necessary to secure a livelihood, and sought the new and fertile country southeast of the Ohio River and northwest of the Cumberland Mountains, where corn would produce bread for them with simply the labor of planting, and where the achievements of their guns would supply them with meat and clothing; a set of men who, with that instinct which belongs to the beaver, built a number of log cabins on the banks of some secluded stream, which they surrounded with palisades for the better protection of their wives and children, and then went wandering about, with guns on their shoulders, or traps under their arms, leading a solitary, listless, ruminating life, till aroused by the appearance of danger, or a sudden attack from unseen enemies, when instantly they approved themselves the bravest of warriors, and the most expert of strategists.
There were no landmarks to hold the mind to the scene, nor, in case of battle, give the strategists points of vantage for the iron game. About noon, the detached groups stalking a little negligently now over the tedious plains, were startled by the unexpected.
We do not hear of the wonderful younger generals that war is developing, and who are coming forward more rapidly there than from any similar developments under the bureaucracy of Germany. The two greatest military strategists the war has developed are not in Germany or England. They are in Russia and France, and their names have not yet crossed the Atlantic in the press reports.
Lee used to express his regret that all the greatest strategists were tied to their editorial chairs. But sterner feelings were aroused against that recalcitrant State Governor, Joseph Brown of Georgia, who declared eight thousand of his civil servants to be totally exempt.
It seems to have become clear to his mind that, if a chess-player acquired skill, not only by playing actual games and by studying actual games played by masters, but also by working out hypothetical chess problems, it ought to be possible to devise a system whereby army officers could supplement their necessarily meagre experience of actual war, and their necessarily limited opportunities for studying with full knowledge the actual campaigns of great strategists, by working out hypothetical, tactical, and strategic problems.
When the time came this right was to curve in like a hook and cut the ground out from the left wing of the rebel army. This is the homely way these unscientific strategists made the movement known to each other, and it very aptly describes the formulated plan of battle, save that, of course, there were gaps between the forces here and there along this human crescent.
Reference to the war map will show that this Pinega area gave all the advantages of strategy to the Red commander, whose rapid advance down the valley with the approach of winter had taken the Archangel strategists by surprise.
The German war plans already cited, which were based respectively on the occupation of Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine, and Jomini's remarks on Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign serve well to show the point to which continental strategists have advanced along the road which Clausewitz was the first to indicate clearly.
Indeed, some have gone so far as to ascribe to great strategists and tacticians a mental organ peculiarly adapted to this point. But the calculation of time and space, although it lies universally at the foundation of Strategy, and is to a certain extent its daily bread, is still neither the most difficult, nor the most decisive one.
The only place where he could hope to find food in any quantity was Manzanillo, and to reach that port he would have had to make a forced march of from twelve to fifteen days. But the question whether the interior line of advance or the coastline was the better must be left to strategists, and I express no opinion with regard to it.
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