Was there ever anything so absurd as this, outside of comic opera--this and the extraordinary reign of incapacity in the Confederate army and Government? That was of like kind and quality. The simple fact, of which the historian is obliged to take account, is that if ordinary common-sense and the commonest forms of military sagacity had been in control on either side at the beginning of the war--if the men able to do things had been permitted to do them--the struggle must almost certainly have ended within a few months after its beginning; tens, yes, scores and hundreds of thousands of lives must have been spared and multitudes of millions in expenditure and in the destruction of property would have been saved to the American people. That however was not to be. It was written in the Book of Fate that for a time incapacity, self-seeking, narrow-minded, jealousy of rank, and other like forces of the coarse and the commonplace were to rule about equally on the one side and on the other, and that thus the war was to be prolonged at terrible cost of sorrow and suffering and slaughter. This was the situation in the West at the time when McClellan was drilling his men around Washington, while Beauregard and Johnston were futilely fortifying at Centreville to meet an assault that only the writer of nonsense rhymes could at that time have regarded as possible, and the victorious Federal forces on the Carolina coasts were succumbing to the lassitude which that climate invites, making no vigorous efforts to conquer the exposed and indefensible Confederate lines of communication in that quarter. Grant had a force of commanding numbers in the neighborhood of Forts Henry and Donelson. His army had been swelled to 27,000 men. Buell had as many more men--some of them battle-seasoned--at Louisville and south of that city. There were other forces in eastern Kentucky under capable commanders, which could easily have been brought to bear, forming an army of more than 100,000 men in support of any southward movement that might be undertaken. The movement which naturally suggested itself to an aggressive military mind was one against Nashville, with an eye to the penetration of the South from that point as a base of supplies. The "march to the sea" was as easy a possibility then as when Sherman made it years later. This was Grant's idea, and it had behind it the eminent common-sense which usually inspired and informed that very practical general's plans. His purpose was to march with an overwhelming force, from Nashville to the Gulf. He could have done this easily and certainly, had he been permitted to undertake it with the forces then available. But, as we have seen, his purpose was brought to naught by the veto of General Halleck, whose notion of strategy seems to have been to let his enemy determine where and when the fighting should occur.