Elements of Military Art and Science eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 486 pages of information about Elements of Military Art and Science.

Elements of Military Art and Science eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 486 pages of information about Elements of Military Art and Science.
descend the Ottawa river to Montreal.  But as there might be some difficulty in conveying their war-steamers over some twelve or fifteen portages between the Georgian Bay and the Ottawa, and as the upper waters of that river are not navigable by such craft, it has, by some of the military writers before alluded to, been deemed preferable to descend Lake Huron, St. Clair river and lake, run the gauntlet past the British forts on the Detroit, descend Lake Erie and the Niagara[26] into Lake Ontario, so as to meet the English as they come steaming up the St. Lawrence!

[Footnote 26:  How they are to pass the Falls was not determined either by Harry Bluff or the Memphis Convention.]

It is agreed upon all sides that the British must first collect their forces at Quebec, and then pass along the line of the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario to reach the Niagara and Detroit frontiers.  Our boards of engineers have deemed it best to collect troops on the Champlain line, and, by penetrating between Montreal and Quebec, separate the enemy’s forces and cut off all the remainder of Canada from supplies and reinforcements from England.  But it has been discovered by certain western men that to cut the trunk of a tree is not the proper method of felling it:  we must climb to the top and pinch the buds, or, at most, cut off a few of the smaller limbs.  To blow up a house, we should not place the mine under the foundation, but attach it to one of the shingles of the roof!  We have already shown that troops collected at Albany may reach the great strategic point on the St. Lawrence by an easy and direct route of two hundred miles; but forces collected at Pittsburg and Memphis must pass over a difficult and unfrequented route of two thousand miles.

Our merchant marine on the lakes secures to us a naval superiority in that quarter at the beginning of a war; and our facilities for ship-building are there equal if not superior to any possessed by the enemy.  The only way, therefore, in which our ascendency on the lakes can be lost, is by the introduction of steam craft from the Atlantic.  The canals and locks constructed for this object will pass vessels of small dimensions and drawing not over eight and a half feet water.

How are we to prevent the introduction of these Atlantic steamers into our lakes?  Shall we, at the first opening of hostilities, march with armed forces upon the enemy’s line of artificial communication and blow up the locks of their ship-canals, thus meeting the enemy’s marine at the very threshold of its introduction into the interior seas; or shall we build opposition steam-navies at Pittsburg and Memphis, some two thousand miles distant, and then expend some forty or fifty millions[27] in opening an artificial channel to enable them to reach Lake Ontario, after its borders have been laid waste by the hostile forces?  Very few disinterested judges would hesitate in forming their opinion on this question.[28]

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Elements of Military Art and Science from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.