McClellan's Military Career Reviewed and Exposed: The Military Policy of the Administration Set Forth and Vindicated (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from McClellan's Military Career Reviewed and Exposed: The Military Policy of the Administration Set Forth and Vindicated

There is no object more calculated to claim the sympathy of a generous people than 'a defeated general; and unless his failure has been associated with circum stances of personal turpitude he is pretty sure, sooner or later, to receive that syr'n pathy. Machiavelli, that subtle observer, points out that the Romans never blamed their unsuccessful commanders, esteeming that to a high-minded man-the mortiflca tion of defeat was of itself punishment, enough. Sertorius, Mithridates and Wil liam of Orange were habitually unsuccessful generals, and yet history has'not chosen to cast contumely on their names: on the contrary, the memory of their failures is covered up'bythe remembrance of qualities of mind that deserved, if they could not command, success.

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