military ability, and Gilbert a martinet, without an idea of discipline or system--the worst kind of a martinet. It would have been a miracle had Buell succeeded. His campaign was a failure when the circumstances of Nelson's death and Halleck's interference made Thomas the "fifth wheel to the coach," and McCook, Crittenden, and Gilbert the immediate directors of the corps forming the Army of the Ohio. Buell was removed for the failure at Perryville, and actually court-martialed for that crime of McCook and Gilbert. The fact is that it was fought against Buell's express orders; and McCook, the corps commander directing it, boasted during the battle to Captain James S. Stokes (formerly of the regular army, but at that time in command of the Chicago Board of Trade Battery) that he had General Buell's orders not to fight in his pocket, and added that if General Buell supposed that "Aleck McCook was coming in sight of the enemy without fighting him, he was much mistaken in his man." The fact is that Perryville was an unnecessary battle, and was fought only through the jealousy existing between our commanders. The great blessing of the late civil war in this country--I am not going to stop now to say how it was a great blessing, taking, as it eventually did, the form of a crusade against ignorance and slavery--a crusade for knowledge and liberty, in which all Christendom of this enlightened age should have joined with the same fervor that in a darker age it did in the crusade against the Crescent for the Tomb--this great blessing brought with it certain evils, and the basest of these was jealousy. This most degrading passion existed in our armies to a most surprising degree--to such an extent, indeed, that noble actions, instead of being held up as examples worthy of emulation, were often--in nine cases out of every ten--in which the actor survived, made the means of bringing him into ridicule among his immediate associates. Great men were injured in their prospects--brave men have been debarred from their just reward of promotion--ay, and even great campaigns retarded and ruined by the jealous interference of the envious and malicious. Important junctions of armies were prevented, needed re-enforcements held back, and many a brave man sacrificed by the jealousy and envy of commanders who would be great, but who could not suffer to see others great. Jealousy did more actual damage to the cause during the war than did incompetency, and I don't think I can put the fact any more forcibly than by saying that.