BY WILLIAM F. G. SHANKS. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1866. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, by Harper & Brothers , In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York....

The purpose of this volume is to make more familiar to the general public the actual characters of some of our great military leaders during the late war. I have attempted to portray them not as on parade, but in undress uniform, and to illustrate not only their great military qualities, but more particularly their mental peculiarities and characteristics. These pages will be found to contain many facts about some of the great battles which official reports have left untold, with such recollecti

THOMAS AS A TACTICIAN. While General Sherman was pursuing Hood, when that gallant but not very sagacious rebel was making his ill-judged and ill-advised but bold march northward, leaving Atlanta and our armies in his rear, some exigency arose which made General Sherman regret the absence of General George H. Thomas, who had been sent to Nashville. I do not now distinctly remember what the exigency was other than that it related to some important movement—perhaps the movement to the sea—but, at a

GRANT AS A GENERAL. The clearest conception of the characters of Generals Sherman and Thomas is obtained by contrasting them. A correct estimate of General Grant may be had by forming in the imagination a character combining the peculiarities of both Sherman and Thomas; for in the person of the lieutenant general the very opposite qualities which distinguish the others meet and combine with singular grace and felicity. General Grant does not make so effective, or, so to speak, so dramatic a pict

SHERIDAN AS A CAVALRYMAN. Very few wars of as short duration as was that of the late Southern rebellion produced as many as three great and original military leaders of the calibre of Sherman, Thomas, and Grant. The ancients could boast of but one Alexander, one Cæsar, one Hannibal to an era; modern times of but one Frederick, one Suwarrow, one Napoleon to an age. It took half a century of constant and almost universal revolution to produce Napoleon and his prodigies. Only this country, of all t

FIGHTING JOE HOOKER. The name and fame of General Joe Hooker are, as they ought to be, dear to every American, for he is eminently a national man. Born in Massachusetts, he has resided in every section of the country, and is cosmopolitan in habits and ideas. Nature never made him for one part of the land. He has fought over every part of the country from Maryland to Mexico, from the Potomac to beyond the Rio Grande, and from a private citizen of the most westerly district of California, he rose

REMINISCENCES OF ROUSSEAU. All failures find their special apologies, and some curious ones were originated by the admirers of McClellan to account for the singular ineffective policy of that officer. That policy is now generally known as the "McNapoleonic," in contradistinction to the Fabian policy, from which it differed only in that Fabian attained valuable results, while McClellan did not. Every thing was to have been effected by the young Napoleon, according to his admirers, by pure, unallo

PECULIARITIES OF VARIOUS GENERALS. I was particularly fortunate during the war in coming in frequent contact with the four great characters who most deeply impressed themselves upon the public mind, and won the first positions in the history of the era. Sherman, Thomas, Grant, and Sheridan were the ablest, and in the end the most successful of our leaders, and their fame is now a part of that of the country. Hooker and Rousseau were also representative soldiers, and will be quoted by posterity a

SOME PECULIARITIES OF OUR VETERANS. Every leader of our armies has had his story written—has carved it out with his sword, and impressed himself on the time. But who shall write the history of our soldiers? Who shall dare attempt to tell the story or portray the characteristics of our veterans? The nation, in its hour of distress, found leaders worthy to lead in any cause. No better marshals followed the great Napoleon. We shall leave to posterity the task of comparing our greatest general, Gran