Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major General Introduction by Henry D. Sedgwick. 225 pp., hc, Index.
Correspondence of John Sedgwick Major-General
As the world goes on, and the present time passes into history, a constantly increasing interest attaches to the words and acts of those who have made that history.
Biography is becoming more and more the most fascinating of general reading. More and more we love to mark by a tablet the spots of earth where, by individual effort, a forward step has been taken or a turning-point reached in the life of the nation. More and more we delight to commemorate the birthplaces and the final resting-places of our great men. Within due bounds, hero-worship is a generous passion. The desire to learn the details of the lives of our noble dead, what were their likes and dislikes, their favorite and familiar habits,ñnot their graces only, but even their foibles,ñis a craving common to eager natures. It is an honorable instinct as well as a just tribute. Moreover, the letters of our vanished friends are like their living voicesñthey bring the writers as if from the grave to our minds and hearts.
For these reasons we deeply regret that the records of Major-General John Sedgwickís life are so scanty, but we are proportionately grateful that so much of his correspondence has been saved as appears in these few pages. It adds, also, to the interest of these letters that they were written without the least idea that they might ever reach a somewhat wider circle. With the charm of unpremeditation they have the careless ease which belongs to untrammeled family correspondence. Through adding little to our knowledge of either the Mexican or the Civil War, it is very interesting to observe the writerís personal connection with both. Those military movements which, under the leadership of Taylor and Scott, met with such extraordinary success, become vivid when we read his incidental and off-hand account of them, though so fragmentary and incomplete. We thrill with his righteous indignation at such disgraces as the two Bull Runs, and those disheartening failures at Frederickburg and Chancellorsville, which he did all that one man could do to prevent. We share his sense of relief in the gracious salvation of Gettysburg, and his renewed anxiety in the desperate struggles of the Wilderness. As we read the letters these feelings come to many of us with a keener sense of reality than at second hand in the historianís narrative.
When the idea of printing the correspondence first suggested itself, the only letters which were known to exist were those written during the Mexican War, about ten years after Sedgwickís graduation from West Point. Even those, modest as they are, are of much interest. Many of us to-day do not like the way in which the quarrel with Mexico was provoked by the United States. It recalls the story of the wolf and the lamb. But this, as a matter of national ethics, concerns only the crafty politicians who devised the war in the interest of slavery.
The officers and men who won at Palo Alto and Cerro Gordo were entitled to the same praise with those who fought at Antietam or Spottsylvania. But no more wars, it may be safely and thankfully said, will be waged by Anglo-Saxons on this continent, for generations at least, to promote any cause or extend any area but those of freedom. We are glad that the later correspondence has come to light. While the sense of duty which carried Sedgwick through our earlier strifes was honorable to him, it is satisfactory to have also a personal record of his connection with a war more honorable to the country.
Through the story of these wars has been so often told and retold since these letters were written, they still have the interest that attaches to all the words and acts of a noble actor in both military dramas. In the second series they have the weight which belongs to mature experience and high command.
Sedgwick was a born soldier. Throughout his correspondence we recognize the simplicity, modesty, straightforwardness, and courage which made him, in the hearts of his command, a not less beloved officer than any in the Federal army. In almost every one of these letters we catch also a glimpse of the tenderness of his brave heart. Had he survived the American conflict, it would have been his wish to end his days, like Cincinatus, on his farm. He would have beaten his sword into a plow-share, and digged in the soil where he now lies.
But it was otherwise ordered. In the ìCornwall Hollow,î under the shadow of the Cornwall Hills, rest his honored remains. A noble but simple monument, the tribute partly of loving friends and partly of a grateful country, marks the spot. No soldier has a purer record; few soldiers have a more beautiful resting-place or a more appropiate memorial.
Henry D. Sedgwick