thin speaking distance of the enemy's pickets, and within view
of their observatories. And yet all this immense piece of work was done
with such profound secrecy, that, when the first shot from these
batteries fell among the enemy, it astounded them as if it had come from
the planet Jupiter. At the time, this brilliant success was merged in
the greater prospective brilliancy of the expected results. Now that the
results have failed to follow, we can perhaps do more justice to the
remarkable skill displayed in the preliminary movements.

So far as this report is concerned, General Gillmore shows no
disposition to do injustice to other officers. In reprinting the daily
correspondence with Admiral Dahlgren it might have been better to omit
or explain some hasty expressions of censure,--as where a young naval
lieutenant is charged (on page 333) with defeating an important measure
by acting without orders, though the fact was, that the officer was not
under General Gillmore's orders at all, and simply followed the
instructions of his immediate commander. But in dealing with officers of
higher rank he is more discreet, and his implied criticisms on Admiral
Dahlgren are not so severe as might have been expected. They are not
nearly so sharp as those which were constantly heard, during the siege,
from the officers of the navy; and the Admiral's telegraphic note on
page 327, "My chief pilot informs me a gale is coming on, and I am
coming into the creek," was the source of very unpardonable levity on
board some of the gun-boats.

In the few passages relating to the colored troops, in the main report,
the author shows evident pains in the statement, with rather
unsatisfactory results. The style suggests rather the adroitness of the
politician than the frankness of the soldier. This is the case, for
instance, in his narrative of the unsuccessful assault upon Fort Wagner,
where he uses language which would convey the impression, to nine
readers out of ten, that it was somehow a reproach to the Fifty-Fourth
Massachusetts that it was thrown into disorder, and that this disorder
checked the progress of the rest. Of course this was so,--because it led
the charge. It is not usual to say, in preparing a very brief narrative
of some railway collision, that the leading car "was thrown into a state
of great disorder, which reacted unfavorably upon, and delayed the
progress of, those which followed." Yet it is hardly less absurd to say
it of