In the following year, he again distinguished himself by defeating Hood at Nashville, in one of the most brilliant battles of the war.  The defeat was the most decisive by either side in a general engagement, the Confederate army losing half its numbers, and being so routed and demoralized that it could not rally and was practically destroyed.  Thomas’s plan of battle is studied to this day in the military schools of Europe, and has been compared with that of Napoleon at Austerlitz.

After Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas, there is a wide gap.  No other commanders on the Union side measured up to them, although there were many of great ability.  McPherson, Buell, Sumner, Hancock, Meade, Rosecrans, Kilpatrick, Pope—­all had their hours of triumph, but none of them developed into what could be called a great commander.  Whether from inherent weakness, or from lack of opportunity for development, all stopped short of greatness.  It is worth noting that every famous general, Union or Confederate, and most of the merely prominent ones, were graduates of West Point and had received their baptism of fire in Mexico, the only exception being Sheridan, who did not graduate from West Point until after the war with Mexico was over.

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Turning now to the Confederate side, we find here, too, four supremely able commanders, the first of whom, Robert E. Lee, is believed by many to be the greatest in our country’s history.  No doubt some of the renown which attaches to Lee’s name is due to his desperate championship of a lost cause, and to the love which the people of the South bore, and still bear, him because of his singularly sweet and unselfish character.  But, sentiment aside, and looking at him only as a soldier, he must be given a place in the front rank of our greatest captains.  There are not more than two or three to rank with him—­certainly there is none to rank ahead of him.

Robert Edward Lee was a son of that famous “Light Horse Harry” Lee to whose exploits during the Revolution we have already referred.  He was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1807, entered West Point at the age of eighteen, and graduated four years later, second in his class.  His father had died ten years before, and his mother lived only long enough to welcome him home from the Academy.  He was at once assigned to the engineer corps of the army, distinguished himself in the war with Mexico and served as superintendent of West Point from 1852 to 1855.

Meanwhile, at the age of twenty-four, he had married Mary Randolph, daughter of Washington Parke Custis, of Arlington, and great-grand-daughter of George Washington’s wife.  Miss Custis was a great heiress, and in time the estate of Arlington, situated on the heights across the Potomac from Washington, became hers and her husband’s, but he nevertheless continued in the service.  The marriage was a happy and fortunate one in every way, and Lee’s home life was throughout a source of help and inspiration to him.