MILITARY ACADEMY.
The small military establishment of the United States seemed to be
almost in a state of dissolution about this time, from the frequency
of desertion; and the wisdom of Congress was taxed to find a remedy
for the evil. It could devise no other than an increase of pay to
the rank and file and non-commissioned officers; which upon trial,
was found to answer but little purpose. In an army of 6000 the
desertions were 1450 in the year; and increasing. Mr. Macon from his
home in North Carolina, having his attention directed to the subject
by the debates in Congress, wrote me a letter, in which he laid his
finger upon the true cause of these desertions, and consequently
showed what should be the true remedy. He wrote thus:
"Why does the army, of late years, desert more than formerly?
Because the officers have been brought up at West Point, and
not among the people. Soldiers desert because not attached to
the service, or not attached to the officers. West Point cadets
prevent the promotion of good sergeants, and men cannot like
a service which denies them promotion, nor like officers who
get all the commissions. The increase of pay will not cure the
evil, and nothing but promotion will. In the Revolutionary army,
we had many distinguished officers, who entered the army as
privates."
This is wisdom, and besides carrying conviction for the truth of
all it says, it leads to reflections upon the nature and effects of
our national military school, which extend beyond the evil which
was the cause of writing it. Since the act of 1812, which placed
this institution upon its present footing, giving its students a
legal right to appointment (as constructed and practised), it may be
assumed that there is not a government in Europe, and has been none
since the commencement of the French revolution (when the nobles
had pretty nearly a monopoly of army appointments), so unfriendly
to the rights of the people, and giving such undue advantages to
some parts of the community over the rest. Officers can now rise
from the ranks in all the countries of Europe--in Austria, Russia,
Prussia, as well as in Great Britain, of which there are constant
and illustrious examples. Twenty-three marshals of the empire rose
from the ranks--among them Key, Massena, Oudinot, Murat, Soult,
Bernadotte. In Great Britain, notwithstanding her Royal Military
College, the largest part of the commissions are now given to
citizens in civil life, and to non-commissioned officers. A return
lately made to parliament shows that in eighteen years--from
1830 to 1847--the number of citizens who received commissions,
was 1,266; the number of non-commissioned officers promoted, was
446; and the number of cadets appointed from the Royal Military
College was 473. These citizen appointments were exclusive of those
who purchased commissions--another mode for citizens to get into
the British army, and which largely increases the number in that
class of appointments--sales of commissions, with the approbation
of the government, being there valid. But exclusive of purchased
commissions during the same period of eighteen years, the number
of citizens appointed, and of non-commissioned officers promoted,
were, together, nearly four times the number of government cadets
appointed. Now, how has it been in our service during any equal
number of years, or all the years, since the Military Academy got
into full operation under the act of 1812? I confine the inquiry
to the period subsequent to the war of 1812, for during that war
there were field and general officers in service who came from
civil life, and who procured the promotion of many meritorious
non-commissioned officers; the act not having at first been
construed to exclude them. How many? Few or none, of citizens
appointed, or non-commissioned officers promoted--only in new or
temporary corps--the others being held to belong to the government
cadets.
I will mention two instances coming within my own knowledge, to
illustrate the difficulty of obtaining a commission for a citizen
in the regular regiments--one the case of the late Capt. Hermann
Thorn, son of Col. Thorn, of New-York. The young man had applied for
the place of cadet at West Point; and not being able to obtain it,
and having a strong military turn, he sought service in Europe, and
found it in Austria; and admitted into a hussar regiment on the
confines of Turkey, without commission, but with the pay, clothing,
and ration of a corporal; with the privilege of associating with
officers, and a right to expect a commission if he proved himself
worthy. These are the exact terms, substituting sergeant for
corporal, on which cadets were received into the army, and attached
to companies, in Washington's time. Young Thorn proved himself to
be worthy; received the commission; rose in five years to the rank
of first lieutenant; when, the war breaking out between the United
States and Mexico, he asked leave to resign, was permitted to do
so, and came home to ask service in the regular army of the United
States. His application was made through Senator Cass and others,
he only asking for the lowest place in the gradation of officers,
so as not to interfere with the right of promotion in any one. The
application was refused on the ground of illegality, he not having
graduated at West Point. Afterwards I took up the case of the young
man, got President Polk to nominate him, sustained the nomination
before the Senate; and thus got a start for a young officer who soon
advanced himself, receiving two brevets for gallant conduct and
several wounds in the great battles of Mexico; and was afterwards
drowned, conducting a detachment to California, in crossing his men
over the great Colorado of the West.
Thus Thorn was with difficulty saved. The other case was that of
the famous Kit Carson also nominated by President Polk. I was not
present to argue his case when he was rejected, and might have done
no good if I had been, the place being held to belong to a cadet
that was waiting for it. Carson was rejected because he did not come
through the West Point gate. Being a patriotic man, he has since led
many expeditions of his countrymen, and acted as guide to the United
States officers, in New Mexico, where he lives. He was a guide to
the detachment that undertook to rescue the unfortunate Mrs. White,
whose fate excited so much commiseration at the time; and I have the
evidence that if he had been commander, the rescue would have been
effected, and the unhappy woman saved from massacre.
This rule of appointment (the graduates of the academy to take
all) may now be considered the law of the land, so settled by
construction and senatorial acquiescence; and consequently that
no American citizen is to enter the regular army except through
the gate of the United States Military Academy; and few can reach
that gate except through the weight of a family connection, a
political influence, or the instrumentality of a friend at court.
Genius in obscurity has no chance; and the whole tendency of the
institution is to make a governmental, and not a national army.
Appointed cadet by the President, nominated officer by him, promoted
upon his nomination, holding commission at his pleasure, receiving
his orders as law, looking to him as the fountain of honor, the
source of preferment, and the dispenser of agreeable and profitable
employment--these cadet officers must naturally feel themselves
independent of the people, and dependent upon the President; and be
irresistibly led to acquire the habits and feelings which, in all
ages, have rendered regular armies obnoxious to popular governments.
The instinctive sagacity of the people has long since comprehended
all this, and conceived an aversion to the institution which has
manifested itself in many demonstrations against it--sometimes in
Congress, sometimes in the State legislatures, always to be met,
and triumphantly met, by adducing Washington as the father and
founder of the institution.--No adduction could be more fallacious.
Washington is no more the father of the present West Point than he
is of the present Mount Vernon. The West Point of his day was a
school of engineering and artillery, and nothing more; the cadet of
his day was a young soldier, attached to a company, and serving with
it in the field and in the camp, "with the pay, clothing, and ration
of sergeant" (act of 1794); and in the intervals of active service,
if he had shown an inclination for the profession, and a capacity
for its higher branches, then he was sent, in the "discretion" of
the President, to West Point, to take instruction in those higher
branches, namely, artillery and engineering, and nothing more. All
the drills both of officer and private--all the camp duty--all
the trainings in the infantry, the cavalry, and the rifle--were
then left to be taught in the field and the camp--a better school
than any academy; and under officers who were to lead them into
action--better teachers than any school-room professors. And all
without any additional expense to the United States.
All was right in the time of Washington, and afterwards, up to the
act of 1812. None became cadets then but those who had a stomach for
the hardships, as well as taste for the pleasures of a soldier's
life--who, like the Young Norval on the Grampian Hills, had felt
the soldier's blood stir in their veins, and longed to be off to
the scene of war's alarms, instead of standing guard over flocks
and herds. Cadets were not then sent to a superb school, with the
emoluments of officers, to remain four years at public expense,
receiving educations for civil as well as military life, with the
right to have commissions and be provided for by the government; or
with the secret intent to quit the service as soon as they could
do better--which most of them soon do. The act of 1812 did the
mischief and that insidiously and by construction, while ostensibly
keeping up the old idea of cadets serving with their companies,
and only detached when the President pleased, to get instruction
at the academy. It runs thus: "The cadets heretofore appointed in
the service of the United States, whether of artillery, cavalry,
riflemen, or infantry, or may be in future appointed or hereinafter
provided, shall at no time exceed 250; that they may be attached, at
the discretion of the President of the United States as students to
the Military Academy; and be subject to the established regulations
thereof."
The deception of this clause is in keeping up the old idea of
these cadets being with their companies, and by the judgment of
the President detached from their companies, and attached, as
students, to the Military Academy. The President is to exercise a
"discretion," by which the cadet is transferred for a while from
his company to the school, to be there as a student; that is to
say, like a student, but still retaining his original character of
_quasi_ officer in his company. This change from camp to school,
upon the face of the act, was to be, as formerly, a question for the
President to decide, dependent for its solution upon the military
indications of the young man's character, and his capacity for the
higher branches of the service; and this only permissive in the
President. He "may" attach, &c. Now, all this is illusion. Cadets
are not sent to companies, whether of artillery, infantry, cavalry,
or riflemen. The President exercises no "discretion" about detaching
them from their company and attaching them as students. They are
appointed as students, and go right off to school, and get four
years' education at the public expense, whether they have any taste
for military life, or not. That is the first large deception under
the act: others follow, until it is all deception. Another clause
says, the cadet shall "sign articles, with the consent of his parent
or guardian, to serve five years, unless sooner discharged." This
is deceptive, suggesting a service which has no existence, and
taking a bond for what is not to be performed. It is the language
of a soldier's enlistment, where there is no enlistment; and was a
fiction invented to constitutionalize the act. The language makes
the cadet an enlisted soldier, bound to serve the United States
the usual soldier's term, when this paper soldier--this apparent
private in the ranks--is in reality a gentleman student, with the
emoluments of an officer, obtaining education at public expense,
instead of carrying a musket in the ranks. The whole clause is an
illusion, to use no stronger term, and put in for a purpose which
the legislative history of the day well explains; and that was,
to make the act constitutional on its face, and enable it to get
through the forms, and become a law. There were members who denied
the constitutional right of Congress to establish this national
eleemosynary university; and others who doubted the policy and
expediency of officering the army in this manner. To get over these
objections, the selection of the students took the form, in the
statute, of a soldier's enlistment; and in fact they sign articles
of enlistment, like recruits, but only to appease the constitution
and satisfy scruples; and I have myself, in the early periods of
my service in the Senate, seen the original articles brought into
secret session and exhibited, to prove that the student was an
enlisted soldier, and not a student, and therefore constitutionally
in service. The term of five years being found to be no term of
service at all, as the student might quit the service within a year
after his education, which many of them did, it was extended to
eight; but still without effect, except in procuring a few years of
unwilling service from those who mean to quit; as the greater part
do. I was told by an officer in the time of the Mexican war that,
of thirty-six cadets who had graduated and been commissioned at the
same time with himself, there were only about half a dozen then
in service; so that this great national establishment is mainly a
school for the gratuitous education of those who have influence to
get there. The act provides that these students are to be instructed
in the lower as well as the higher branches of the military art;
they are to be "trained and taught all the duties incident to a
regular camp." Now, all this training and teaching, and regular camp
duty, was done in Washington's time in the regular camp itself, and
about as much better done as substance is better than form, and
reality better than imitation, with the advantage of training each
officer to the particular arm of the service to which he was to
belong, and in which he would be expected to excel.
Gratuitous instruction to the children of the living is a vicious
principle, which has no foundation in reason or precedent. Such
instruction, to the children of those who have died for their
country, is as old as the first ages of the Grecian republics, as
we learn from the oration which Thucydides puts into the mouth of
Pericles at the funeral of the first slain of the Peloponnesian war:
and as modern as the present British Military Royal Academy; which,
although royal, makes the sons of the living nobility and gentry
pay; and only gives gratuitous instruction and support to the sons
of those who have died in the public service. And so, I believe, of
other European military schools.
These are vital objections to the institution; but they do not
include the high practical evil which the wisdom of Mr. Macon
discerned, and with which this chapter opened--namely, a monopoly
of the appointments. That is effected in the fourth section, not
openly and in direct terms (for that would have rendered the act
unconstitutional on its face), but by the use of words which admit
the construction and the practice, and therefore make the law,
which now is, the legal right of the cadet to receive a commission
who has received the academical diploma for going through all the
classes. This gives to these cadets a monopoly of the offices, to
the exclusion of citizens and non-commissioned officers; and it
deprives the Senate of its constitutional share in making these
appointments. By a "regulation," the academic professors are to
recommend at each annual examination, five cadets in each class,
on account of their particular merit, whom the President is to
attach to companies. This expunges the Senate, opens the door to
that favoritism which natural parents find it hard to repress among
their own children, and which is proverbial among teachers. By the
constitution, and for a great public purpose, and not as a privilege
of the body, the Senate is to have an advising and consenting power
over the army appointments: by practice and construction it is
not the President and Senate, but the President and the academy
who appoint the officers. The President sends the student to the
academy: the academy gives a diploma, and that gives him a right
to the commission--the Senate's consent being an obligatory form.
The President and the academy are the real appointing power, and
the Senate nothing but an office for the registration of their
appointments. And thus the Senate, by construction of a statute
and its own acquiescence, has ceased to have control over these
appointments: and the whole body of army officers is fast becoming
the mere creation of the President and of the military academy. The
effect of this mode of appointment will be to create a governmental,
instead of a national army; and the effect of this exclusion of
non-commissioned officers and privates from promotion, will be
to degrade the regular soldier into a mercenary, serving for pay
without affection for a country which dishonors him. Hence the
desertions and the correlative evil of diminished enlistments on the
part of native-born Americans.
Courts of law have invented many fictions to facilitate trials, but
none to give jurisdiction. The jurisdiction must rest upon fact,
and so should the constitutionality of an act of Congress; but this
act of 1812 rests its constitutionality upon fictions. It is a
fiction to suppose that the cadet is an enlisted soldier--a fiction
to suppose that he is attached to a company and thence transferred,
in the "discretion" of the President, to the academy--a fiction
to suppose that he is constitutionally appointed in the army by
the President and Senate. The very title of the act is fictitious,
giving not the least hint, not even in the convenient formula of
"other purposes" of the great school it was about to create.
It is entitled, "An act making further provision for the corps of
engineers;" when five out of the six sections which it contains go
to make further provision for two hundred and fifty students at
a national military and civil university. As now constituted, our
academy is an imitation of the European military schools, which
create governmental and not national officers--which make routine
officers, but cannot create military genius--and which block up
the way against genius--especially barefooted genius--such as this
country abounds in, and which the field alone can develope. "My
children,"--the French generals were accustomed to say to the young
conscripts during the Revolution--"My children, there are some
captains among you, and the first campaign will show who they are,
and they shall have their places." And such expressions, and the
system in which they are founded, have brought out the military
genius of the country in every age and nation, and produced such
officers as the schools can never make.
The adequate remedy for these evils is to repeal the act of 1812,
and remit the academy to condition in Washington's time, and as
enlarged by several acts up to 1812. Then no one would wish to
become a cadet but he that had the soldier in him, and meant to
stick to his profession, and work his way up from the "pay, ration,
and clothing of a sergeant," to the rank of field-officer or
general. Struggles for West Point appointments would then cease,
and the boys on the "Grampian Hills" would have their chance.
This is the adequate remedy. If that repeal cannot be had, then a
subordinate and half-way remedy may be found in giving to citizens
and non-commissioned officers a share of the commissions, equal to
what they get in the British service, and restoring the Senate to
its constitutional right of rejecting as well as confirming cadet
nominations.
These are no new views with me. I have kept aloof from the
institution. During the almost twenty years that I was at the head
of the Senate's Committee on Military Affairs, and would have been
appropriately a "visitor" at West Point at some of the annual
examinations, I never accepted the function, and have never even
seen the place. I have been always against the institution as now
established, and have long intended to bring my views of it before
the country; and now fulfil that intention.