Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ZEE- APPLICATION OF THE MAXIMS LAID DOWN IN CHAPTER I. TO THE THEATER OF WAR CONSTITUTED BY THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY. Whatever be the causes of this great rebellion, we cannot but admit that, at the present moment, the war has lost all resemblance to those wars which a government has sometimes to undertake against its rebellious subjects. It has entirely assumed the character of a war carried on between two powerful neighbors. The military operations must therefore be conducted like those which have for their object the conquest and occupation of a large country possessing great and disciplined armies. We have said above that, according as the war is national, or merely governmental as regards the invaded country, so the operations, and especially the mode of occupying the country, have to be different. In the present case, though perhaps as regards the South the war may be called national, there is no danger of such effects or results as generally attend national uprisings, because the whole male population able to bear arms is already eurolled in the regular armies; and the country being thus stripped of its defenders is void of all material for resistance, except where those armies happen to be. Occupation becomes, therefore, a secondary affair; and our main object should be the destruction or breaking up of the Rebel armies. This successfully accomplished, and all resistance thereby destroyed, the downfall of the Confederate government becomes a matter of course, as well as the surrender and occupation of the Southern towns and sea-ports. Grand operations in accordance with the geography of the theater of war and those maxims which we have, in the first chapter, under the head of "Wars of Invasion," laid down as "the third system," will alone be able to bring about...