Personal Recollections
OF
DISTINGUISHED GENERALS.
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.
PREFACE.
The purpose of this volume is to make more familiarto the general public the actual characters of some of ourgreat military leaders during the late war. I have attemptedto portray them not as on parade, but in undressuniform, and to illustrate not only their great militaryqualities, but more particularly their mental peculiaritiesand characteristics. These pages will be found to containmany facts about some of the great battles which officialreports have left untold, with such recollections of ourgenerals as history proper will not perhaps condescendto record, and to embrace singular facts about great campaignsand strange stories of great men. The portraitsare freely drawn. They are made from actual studies,if not special sittings, and while taking care to give everybeauty, I have omitted none of the deformities or blemishesof my subjects, though I have told in full detailtheir virtues, and have touched on their faults and viceslightly. I have avoided alike extreme extravagance inpraise or censure. Still there is enough shadow to thepictures to give the necessary, if not agreeable contrastto the lights. The reader must not, however, mistakethe stand-point from which I have written. Distance, unfortunatelyfor truth, lends enchantment not only to objects,but to men. The atmosphere of Olympus produces[Pg vi]many phantasmagoria, and the great at a distance existto our eyes in a sort of mirage. The philosophy of perspectiveas applied to natural objects is reversed whenapplied to mankind, and there are very few men who donot grow smaller as one approaches them. Most menare pyramidal in shape only, not proportions. "No manis a hero to his valet." Even Jupiter was ridiculous attimes to Homer. Very few generals have appeared greatto the war correspondents; and though very few of thelatter can claim to be descendants of Diogenes, they canassert, with equal positiveness, that very few of the generalshave been Alexanders, and that "the very sunshines through them." I have written under the disadvantageof being too near the objects drawn; and thosewho do not know the subjects as well may imagine Ihave made them undeservedly Liliputian in dimensions.
Writing contemporaneous history is the most thanklessof tasks, and I discover also one of the least independentof labors. Still I have not written with a goose-quill,and there has been some gall in my ink, yet I donot think I have any thing in the ensuing chapters toblot. I do not think I have done any man injustice.I have written many sentences and made many assertionswhich will doubtless be termed strong, but in writingthese I am only the amanuensis of truth; and I writewith the firm belief that "historical truth should be onl