CAMP DENNISON
Laying out the camp--Rosecrans as engineer--A comfortless
night--Waking to new duties--Floors or no floors for the
huts--Hardee's Tactics--The water-supply--Colonel Tom.
Worthington--Joshua Sill--Brigades organized--Bates's
brigade--Schleich's--My own--McClellan's purpose--Division
organization--Garfield disappointed--Camp routine--Instruction and
drill--Camp cookery--Measles--Hospital barn--Sisters of
Charity--Ferment over re-enlistment--Musters by Gordon
Granger--"Food for powder"--Brigade staff--De Villiers--"A Captain
of Calvary"--The "Bloody Tinth"--Almost a row--Summoned to the
field.
On the 29th of April I was ordered by McClellan to proceed next
morning to Camp Dennison, with the Eleventh and half of the Third
Ohio regiments. The day was a fair one, and when about noon our
railway train reached the camping ground, it seemed an excellent
place for our work. The drawback was that very little of the land
was in meadow or pasture, part being in wheat and part in Indian
corn, which was just coming up. Captain Rosecrans met us, as
McClellan's engineer (later the well-known general), coming from
Cincinnati with a train-load of lumber. He had with him his compass
and chain, and by the help of a small detail of men soon laid off
the ground for the two regimental camps, and the general lines of
the whole encampment for a dozen regiments. It was McClellan's
purpose to put in two brigades on the west side of the railway, and
one on the east. My own brigade camp was assigned to the west side,
and nearest to Cincinnati. The men of the two regiments shouldered
their pine boards and carried them up to the line of the company
streets, which were close to the hills skirting the valley, and
which opened into the parade and drill ground along the railway.
A general plan was given to the company officers by which the huts
should be made uniform in size and shape. The huts of each company
faced each other, three or four on each side, making the street
between, in which the company assembled before marching to its place
on the regimental color line. At the head of each street were the
quarters of the company officers, and those of the "field and staff"
still further in rear. The Regulations were followed in this plan as
closely as the style of barracks and nature of the ground would
permit. Vigorous work housed all the men before night, and it was
well that it did so, for the weather changed in the evening, a cold
rain came on, and the next morning was a chill and dreary one. My
own headquarters were in a little brick schoolhouse of one story,
which stood (and I think still stands) on the east side of the track
close to the railway. My improvised camp equipage consisted of a
common trestle cot and a pair of blankets, and I made my bed in the
open space in front of the teacher's desk or pulpit. My only staff
officer was an aide-de-camp, Captain Bascom (afterward of the
regular army), who had graduated at an Eastern military school, and
proved himself a faithful and efficient assistant. He slept on the
floor in one of the little aisles between the pupils' seats. One
lesson learned that night remained permanently fixed in my memory,
and I had no need of a repetition of it. I found that, having no
mattress on my cot, the cold was much more annoying below than above
me, and that if one can't keep the under side warm, it doesn't
matter how many blankets he may have atop. I procured later an army
cot with low legs, the whole of which could be taken apart and
packed in a very small parcel, and with this I carried a small
quilted mattress of cotton batting. It would have been warmer to
have made my bed on the ground with a heap of straw or leaves under
me; but as my tent had to be used for office work whenever a tent
could be pitched, I preferred the neater and more orderly interior
which this arrangement permitted. This, however, is anticipating.
The comfortless night passed without much refreshing sleep, the
strange situation doing perhaps as much as the limbs aching from
cold to keep me awake. The storm beat through broken window-panes,
and the gale howled about us, but day at last began to break, and
with its dawning light came our first reveille in camp. I shall
never forget the peculiar plaintive sound of the fifes as they
shrilled out on the damp air. The melody was destined to become very
familiar, but to this day I can't help wondering how it happened
that so melancholy a strain was chosen for the waking tune of the
soldiers' camp. The bugle reveille is quite different; it is even
cheery and inspiriting; but the regulation music for the drums and
fifes is better fitted to waken longings for home and all the sadder
emotions than to stir the host from sleep to the active duties of
the day. I lay for a while listening to it, finding its notes
suggesting many things and becoming a thread to string my reveries
upon, as I thought of the past which was separated from me by a
great gulf, the present with its serious duties, and the future
likely to come to a sudden end in the shock of battle. We roused
ourselves; a dash of cold water put an end to dreaming; we ate a
breakfast from a box of cooked provisions we had brought with us,
and resumed the duty of organizing and instructing the camp. The
depression which had weighed upon me since the news of the opening
guns at Sumter passed away, never to return. The consciousness of
having important work to do, and the absorption in the work itself,
proved the best of all mental tonics. The Rubicon was crossed, and
from this time out, vigorous bodily action, our wild outdoor life,
and the strenuous use of all the faculties, mental and physical, in
meeting the daily exigencies, made up an existence which, in spite
of all its hardships and all its discouragements, still seems a most
exhilarating one as I look back on it across a long vista of years.
The first of May proved, instead, a true April day, of the most
fickle and changeable type. Gusts of rain and wind alternated with
flashes of bright sunshine. The second battalion of the Third
Regiment arrived, and the work of completing the cantonments went
on. The huts which were half finished yesterday were now put in good
order, and in building the new ones the men profited by the
experience of their comrades. We were however suddenly thrown into
one of those small tempests which it is so easy to get up in a new
camp, and which for the moment always seems to have an importance
out of all proportion to its real consequence. Captain Rosecrans, as
engineer, was superintending the work of building, and finding that
the companies were putting floors and bunks in their huts, he
peremptorily ordered that these should be taken out, insisting that
the huts were only intended to take the place of tents and give such
shelter as tents could give. The company and regimental officers
loudly protested, and the men were swelling with indignation and
wrath. Soon both parties were before me; Rosecrans hot and
impetuous, holding a high tone, and making use of General
McClellan's name in demanding, as an officer of his staff, that the
floors should be torn out, and the officers of the regiments held
responsible for obedience to the order that no more should be made.
He fairly bubbled with anger at the presumption of those who
questioned his authority. As soon as a little quiet could be got, I
asked Rosecrans if he had specific orders from the general that the
huts should have no floors. No, he had not, but his staff position
as engineer gave him sufficient control of the subject. I said I
would examine the matter and submit it to General McClellan, and
meanwhile the floors already built might remain, though no new ones
should be made till the question was decided. I reported to the
general that, in my judgment, the huts should have floors and bunks,
because the ground was wet when they were built,--they could not be
struck like tents to dry and air the earth, and they were meant to
be permanent quarters for the rendezvous of troops for an indefinite
time. The decision of McClellan was in accordance with the report.
Rosecrans acquiesced, and indeed seemed rather to like me the better
on finding that I was not carried away by the assumption of
indefinite power by a staff officer.
This little flurry over, the quarters were soon got in as
comfortable shape as rough lumber could make them, and the work of
drill and instruction was systematized. The men were not yet armed,
so there was no temptation to begin too soon with the manual of the
musket, and they were kept industriously employed in marching in
single line, by file, in changing direction, in forming columns of
fours from double line, etc., before their guns were put in their
hands. Each regiment was treated as a separate camp, with its own
chain of sentinels, and the officers of the guard were constantly
busy teaching guard and picket duty theoretically to the reliefs off
duty, and inspecting the sentinels on post. Schools were established
in each regiment for field and staff and for the company officers,
and Hardee's Tactics was in the hands of everybody who could procure
a copy. It was one of our great inconveniences that the supply of
the authorized Tactics was soon exhausted, and it was difficult to
get the means of instruction in the company schools. An abridgment
was made and published in a very few days by Thomas Worthington, a
graduate of West Point in one of the earliest classes,--of 1827, I
think,--a son of one of the first governors of Ohio. This eccentric
officer had served in the regular army and in the Mexican War, and
was full of ideas, but was of so irascible and impetuous a temper
that he was always in collision with the powers that be, and spoiled
his own usefulness. He was employed to furnish water to the camp by
contract, and whilst he ruined himself in his efforts to do it well,
he was in perpetual conflict with the troops, who capsized his
carts, emptied his barrels, and made life a burden to him. The
quarrel was based on his taking the water from the river just
opposite the camp, though there was a slaughter-house some distance
above. Worthington argued that the distance was such that the
running water purified itself; but the men wouldn't listen to his
science, vigorously enforced as it was by idiomatic expletives, and
there was no safety for his water-carts till he yielded. He then
made a reservoir on one of the hills, filled it by a steam-pump, and
carried the water by pipes to the regimental camps at an expense
beyond his means, and which, as it was claimed that the scheme was
unauthorized, was never half paid for. His subsequent career as
colonel of a regiment was no more happy, and talents that seemed fit
for highest responsibilities were wasted in chafing against
circumstances which made him and fate seem to be perpetually playing
at cross purposes. [Footnote: He was later colonel of the
Forty-sixth Ohio, and became involved in a famous controversy with
Halleck and Sherman over his conduct in the Shiloh campaign and the
question of fieldworks there. He left the service toward the close
of 1862.]
A very different character was Joshua W. Sill, who was sent to us as
ordnance officer. He too had been a regular army officer, but of the
younger class. Rather small and delicate in person, gentle and
refined in manner, he had about him little that answered to the
popular notion of a soldier. He had resigned from the army some
years before, and was a professor in an important educational
institution in Brooklyn, N. Y., when at the first act of hostility
he offered his services to the governor of Ohio, his native State.
After our day's work, we walked together along the railway,
discussing the political and military situation, and especially the
means of making most quickly an army out of the splendid but
untutored material that was collecting about us. Under his modest
and scholarly exterior I quickly discerned a fine temper in the
metal, that made his after career no enigma to me, and his heroic
death at the head of his division in the thickest of the strife at
Stone's River no surprise.
The two regiments which began the encampment were quickly followed
by others, and the arriving regiments sometimes had their first
taste of camp life under circumstances well calculated to dampen
their ardor. The Fourth Ohio, under Colonel Lorin Andrews, President
of Kenyon College, came just before a thunderstorm one evening, and
the bivouac that night was as rough a one as his men were likely to
experience for many a day. They made shelter by placing boards from
the fence tops to the ground, but the fields were level and soon
became a mire, so that they were a queer-looking lot when they
crawled out next morning. The sun was then shining bright, however,
and they had better cover for their heads by the next night. The
Seventh Ohio, which was recruited in Cleveland and on the Western
Reserve, sent a party in advance to build some of their huts, and
though they too came in a rain-storm, they were less uncomfortable
than some of the others. Three brigades were organized from the
regiments of the Ohio contingent, exclusive of the two which had
been hurried to Washington. The brigadiers, beside myself, were
Generals Joshua H. Bates and Newton Schleich. General Bates, who was
the senior, was a graduate of West Point, who had served some years
in the regular army, but had resigned and adopted the profession of
the law. He lived at Cincinnati, and organized his brigade in that
city. They marched to Camp Dennison on the 20th of May, when, by
virtue of his seniority, General Bates assumed command of the camp
in McClellan's absence. His brigade consisted of the Fifth, Sixth,
Ninth, and Tenth regiments, and encamped on the east side of the
railroad in the bend of the river. General Schleich was a Democratic
senator, who had been in the state militia, and was also one of the
drill-masters of the legislative squad which had drilled upon the
Capitol terrace. His brigade included the Third, Twelfth, and
Thirteenth regiments, and, with mine, occupied the fields on the
west side of the railroad close to the slopes of the hills. My own
brigade was made up of the Fourth, Seventh, Eighth, and Eleventh
regiments, and our position was the southernmost in the general
camp. McClellan had intended to make his own headquarters in the
camp; but the convenience of attending to official business in
Cincinnati kept him in the city. His purpose was to make the brigade
organizations permanent, and to take them as a division to the field
when they were a little prepared for the work. Like many other good
plans, it failed to be carried out. I was the only one of the
brigadiers who remained in the service after the first enlistment
for ninety days, and it was my fate to take the field with new
regiments, only one of which had been in my brigade in camp.
Schleich did not show adaptation to field work, and though taken
into West Virginia with McClellan in June, he was relieved of active
service in a few weeks. He afterward sought and obtained the
colonelcy of the Sixty-first Ohio; but his service with it did not
prove a success, and he resigned in September, 1862, under charges.
[Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 308-310.] General
Bates had some reason to expect an assignment to staff duty with
McClellan, and therefore declined a colonelcy in the line at the end
of the three months' service. He was disappointed in this
expectation after waiting some time for it, and returned to civil
life with the regrets of his comrades. There were some
disappointments, also, in the choice of regimental officers who were
elected in the regiments first organized, but were afterward
appointed by the governor. The companies were organized and assigned
to regiments before they came to camp, but the regimental elections
were held after the companies were assembled. Garfield was a
candidate for the colonelcy of the Seventh Regiment, but as he was
still engaged in important public duties and was not connected with
any company, he was at a disadvantage in the sort of competition
which was then rife. He was defeated,--a greater disappointment to
me than to him, for I had hoped that our close friendship would be
made still closer by comradeship in the field. In a few weeks he was
made colonel of the Forty-second Ohio, in the second levy.
Up to the time that General Bates relieved me of the command of the
camp, and indeed for two or three days longer, the little
schoolhouse was my quarters as well as telegraph and express office.
We had cleared out most of the desks and benches, but were still
crowded together, day and night, in a way which was anything but
comfortable or desirable. Sheds for quartermaster's and subsistence
stores were of first necessity, and the building of a hut for myself
and staff had to be postponed till these were up. On the arrival of
General Bates with two or three staff officers, the necessity for
more room could not be longer ignored, and my own hut was built on
the slope of the hillside behind my brigade, close under the wooded
ridge, and here for the next six weeks was my home. The morning
brought its hour of business correspondence relating to the command;
then came the drill, when the parade ground was full of marching
companies and squads. Officers' drill followed, with sword exercise
and pistol practice. The day closed with the inspection of the
regiments in turn at dress parade, and the evening was allotted to
schools of theoretic tactics, outpost duty, and the like. Besides
their copies of the regulation tactics, officers supplied themselves
with such manuals as Mahan's books on Field Fortifications and on
Outpost Duty. I adopted at the beginning a rule to have some
military work in course of reading, and kept it up even in the
field, sending home one volume and getting another by mail. In this
way I gradually went through all the leading books I could find both
in English and in French, including the whole of Jomini's works, his
histories as well as his "Napoleon" and his "Grandes Opérations
Militaires." I know of no intellectual stimulus so valuable to the
soldier as the reading of military history narrated by an
acknowledged master in the art of war. To see what others have done
in important junctures, and to have both their merits and their
mistakes analyzed by a competent critic, rouses one's mind to
grapple with the problem before it, and begets a generous
determination to try to rival in one's own sphere of action the
brilliant deeds of soldiers who have made a name in other times.
Then the example of the vigorous way in which history will at last
deal with those who fail when the pinch comes, tends to keep a man
up to his work and to make him avoid the rock on which so many have
split, the disposition to take refuge in doing nothing when he finds
it difficult to decide what should be done.
The first fortnight in camp was the hardest for the troops. The
ploughed fields became deep with mud, which nothing could remove but
the good weather which should allow them to pack hard under the
continued tramp of thousands of men. The organization of the camp
kitchens had to be learned by the hardest also, and the men in each
company who had some aptitude for cooking had to be found by a slow
process of natural selection, during which many an unpalatable meal
had to be eaten. A disagreeable bit of information came to us in the
proof that more than half the men had never had the contagious
diseases of infancy. The measles broke out, and we had to organize a
camp hospital at once. A large barn near by was taken for this
purpose, and the surgeons had their hands full of cases which,
however trivial they might seem at home, were here aggravated into
dangerous illness by the unwonted surroundings and the impossibility
of securing the needed protection from exposure. As soon as the
increase of sickness in the camp was known in Cincinnati, the good
women of that city took promptly in hand the task of providing
nurses for the sick, and proper diet and delicacies for hospital
uses. The Sisters of Charity, under the lead of Sister Anthony, a
noble woman, came out in force, and their black and white robes
harmonized picturesquely with the military surroundings, as they
flitted about under the rough timber framing of the old barn,
carrying comfort and hope from one rude couch to another. As to
supplies, hardly a man in a regiment knew how to make out a
requisition for rations or for clothing, and easy as it is to rail
at "red tape," the necessity of keeping a check upon embezzlement
and wastefulness justified the staff bureaus at Washington in
insisting upon regular vouchers to support the quartermaster's and
commissary's accounts. But here, too, men were gradually found who
had special talent for the work.
The infallible newspapers had no lack of material for criticism.
There were plenty of real blunders to invite it, but the severest
blame was quite as likely to be visited upon men and things which
did not deserve it. The governor was violently attacked for things
which he had no responsibility for, or others in which he had done
all that forethought and intelligence could do. When everybody had
to learn a new business, it would have been miraculous if grave
errors had not frequently occurred. Looking back at it, the wonder
is that the blunders and mishaps had not been tenfold more numerous
than they were. By the middle of May the confusion had given place
to reasonable system, but we were now obliged to meet the
embarrassments of reorganization for three years, under the
President's second call for troops. We had more than ten thousand
men who had begun to know something of their duties, and it was
worth a serious effort to transfer them into the permanent service;
but no one who did not go through the ordeal can imagine how trying
it was. In every company some discontented spirits wanted to go
home, shrinking from the perils to which they had committed
themselves in a moment of enthusiasm. For a few to go back, however,
would be a disgrace; and every dissatisfied man, to avoid the odium
of going alone, became a mischief-maker, seeking to prevent the
whole company from re-enlisting. The recruiting of a majority was
naturally made the condition of allowing the company organization to
be preserved, and a similar rule applied to the regiment. The
growing discipline was relaxed or lost in the solicitations, the
electioneering, the speech-making, and the other common arts of
persuasion. After a majority had re-enlisted and an organization was
secure, it would have been better to have discharged the remaining
three months' men and to have sent them home at once; but authority
for this could not be got, for the civil officers could not see, and
did not know what a nuisance these men were. Dissatisfied with
themselves for not going with their comrades, they became sulky,
disobedient, complaining, trying to make the others as unhappy as
themselves by arguing that faith was not kept with them, and doing
all the mischief it was possible to do.
In spite of all these discouragements, however, the daily drills and
instruction went on with some approach to regularity, and our raw
volunteers began to look more like soldiers. Captain Gordon Granger
of the regular army came to muster the re-enlisted regiments into
the three years' service, and as he stood at the right of the Fourth
Ohio, looking down the line of a thousand stalwart men, all in their
Garibaldi shirts (for we had not yet received our uniforms), he
turned to me and exclaimed: "My God! that such men should be food
for powder!" It certainly was a display of manliness and
intelligence such as had hardly ever been seen in the ranks of an
army. There were in camp at that time three if not four companies,
in different regiments, that were wholly made up of undergraduates
of colleges who had enlisted together, their officers being their
tutors and professors; and where there was not so striking evidence
as this of the enlistment of the best of our youth, every company
could still show that it was largely recruited from the
best-nurtured and most promising young men of the community.
Granger had been in the Southwest when the secession movement began,
had seen the formation of military companies everywhere, and the
incessant drilling which had been going on all winter, whilst we, in
a strange condition of political paralysis, had been doing nothing.
His information was eagerly sought by us all, and he lost no
opportunity of impressing upon us the fact that the South was nearly
six months ahead of us in organization and preparation. He did not
conceal his belief that we were likely to find the war a much longer
and more serious piece of business than was commonly expected, and
that unless we pushed hard our drilling and instruction we should
find ourselves at a disadvantage in our earlier encounters. What he
said had a good effect in making officers and men take more
willingly to the laborious routine of the parade ground and the
regimental school; for such opinions as his soon ran through the
camp, and they were commented upon by the enlisted men quite as
earnestly as among the officers. Still, hope kept the upper hand,
and if the question had been put to vote, I believe that
three-fourths of us still cherished the belief that a single
campaign would end the war.
In the organization of my own brigade I had the assistance of
Captain McElroy, a young man who had nearly completed the course at
West Point, and who was subsequently made major of the Twentieth
Ohio. He was sent to the camp by the governor as a drill officer,
and I assigned him to staff duty. For commissary, I detailed
Lieutenant Gibbs, who accompanied one of the regiments from
Cincinnati, and who had seen a good deal of service as clerk in one
of the staff departments of the regular army. I had also for a time
the services of one of the picturesque adventurers who turn up in
such crises. In the Seventh Ohio was a company recruited in
Cleveland, of which the nucleus was an organization of Zouaves,
existing for some time before the war. It was made up of young men
who had been stimulated by the popularity of Ellsworth's Zouaves in
Chicago to form a similar body. They had had as their drill master a
Frenchman named De Villiers. His profession was that of a teacher of
fencing; but he had been an officer in Ellsworth's company, and was
familiar with fancy manoeuvres for street parade, and with a special
skirmish drill and bayonet exercise. Small, swarthy, with angular
features, and a brusque, military manner, in a showy uniform and
jaunty _képi_ of scarlet cloth, covered with gold lace, he created
quite a sensation among us. His assumption of knowledge and
experience was accepted as true. He claimed to have been a surgeon
in the French army in Algiers, though we afterward learned to doubt
if his rank had been higher than that of a barber-surgeon of a
cavalry troop. From the testimonials he brought with him, I thought
I was doing a good thing in making him my brigade-major, as the
officer was then called whom we afterward knew as inspector-general.
He certainly was a most indefatigable fellow, and went at his work
with an enthusiasm that made him very useful for a time. It was
worth something to see a man who worked with a kind of dash,--with a
prompt, staccato movement that infused spirit and energy into all
around him. He would drill all day, and then spend half the night
trying to catch sentinels and officers of the guard at fault in
their duty. My first impression was that I had got hold of a most
valuable man, and others were so much of the same mind that in the
reorganization of regiments he was successively elected major of the
Eighth, and then colonel of the Eleventh. We shall see more of him
as we go on; but it turned out that his sharp discipline was not
steady or just; his knowledge was only skin-deep, and he had neither
the education nor the character for so responsible a situation as he
was placed in. He nearly plagued the life out of the officers of his
regiment before they got rid of him, and was a most brilliant
example of the way we were imposed upon by military charlatans at
the beginning. He was, however, good proof also of the speed with
which real service weeds out the undesirable material which seemed
so splendid in the days of common inexperience and at a distance
from danger. We had visits from clerical adventurers, too, for the
"pay and emoluments of a captain of cavalry" which the law gave to a
chaplain induced some to seek the office who were not the best
representatives of their profession. One young man who had spent a
morning soliciting the appointment in one of the regiments, came to
me in a shamefaced sort of way before leaving camp and said,
"General, before I decide this matter, I wish you would tell me just
what are the pay and emoluments of a _Captain of Calvary!_" Though
most of our men were native Ohioans, General Bates's brigade had in
it two regiments made up of quite contrasted nationalities. The
Ninth Ohio was recruited from the Germans of Cincinnati, and was
commanded by Colonel "Bob" McCook. In camp, the drilling of the
regiment fell almost completely into the hands of the adjutant,
Lieutenant Willich (afterward a general of division), and McCook,
who humorously exaggerated his own lack of military knowledge, used
to say that he was only "clerk for a thousand Dutchmen," so
completely did the care of equipping and providing for his regiment
engross his time and labor. The Tenth was an Irish regiment, and its
men used to be proud of calling themselves the "Bloody Tinth." The
brilliant Lytle was its commander, and his control over them, even
in the beginning of their service and near the city of their home,
showed that they had fallen into competent hands. It happened, of
course, that the guard-house pretty frequently contained
representatives of the Tenth who, on the short furloughs that were
allowed them, took a parting glass too much with their friends in
the city, and came to camp boisterously drunk. But the men of the
regiment got it into their heads that the Thirteenth, which lay just
opposite them across the railroad, took a malicious pleasure in
filling the guard-house with the Irishmen. Some threats had been
made that they would go over and "clean out" the Thirteenth, and one
fine evening these came to a head. I suddenly got orders from
General Bates to form my brigade, and march them at once between the
Tenth and Thirteenth to prevent a collision which seemed imminent.
My brigade was selected because it was the one to which neither of
the angry regiments belonged, the others being ordered into their
quarters. My little Frenchman, De Villiers, covered himself with
glory. His horse flew, under the spur, to the regimental
headquarters, the long roll was beaten as if the drummers realized
the full importance of the first opportunity to sound that warlike
signal, and the brigade-major's somewhat theatrical energy was so
contagious that many of the companies were assembled and ready to
file out of the company streets before the order reached them. We
marched by the moonlight into the space between the belligerent
regiments; but Lytle had already got his own men under control, and
the less mercurial Thirteenth were not disposed to be aggressive, so
that we were soon dismissed with a compliment for our promptness. I
ordered the colonels to march the regiments back to the camps
separately, and with my staff rode through that of the Thirteenth,
to see how matters were there. All was quiet, the men being in their
quarters; so, turning, I passed along near the railway, in rear of
the quartermaster's sheds. In the shadow of the buildings I had
nearly ridden over some one on foot, when he addressed me, and I
recognized an officer of high rank in that brigade. He was in great
agitation, and exclaimed, "Oh, General, what a horrible thing that
brothers should be killing each other!" I assured him the danger of
that was all over, and rode on, wondering a little at his presence
in that place under the circumstances.
The six weeks of our stay in Camp Dennison seem like months in the
retrospect, so full were they crowded with new experiences. The
change came in an unexpected way. The initiative taken by the
Confederates in West Virginia had to be met by prompt action, and
McClellan was forced to drop his own plans to meet the emergency.
The organization and equipment of the regiments for the three years'
service were still incomplete, and the brigades were broken up, to
take across the Ohio the regiments best prepared to go. One by one
my regiments were ordered away, till finally, when on the 3d of July
I received orders to proceed to the Kanawha valley, I had but one of
the four regiments to which I had been trying to give something of
unity and brigade feeling, and that regiment (the Eleventh Ohio) was
still incomplete. General Bates fared even worse; for he saw all his
regiments ordered away, whilst he was left to organize new ones from
freshly recruited companies that were sent to the camp. This was
discouraging to a brigade commander, for even with veteran troops
mutual acquaintance between the officer and his command is a
necessary condition of confidence and a most important element of
strength. My own assignment to the Great Kanawha district was one I
had every reason to be content with, except that for several months
I felt the disadvantage I suffered from assuming command of troops
which I had never seen till we met in the field.
The period of organization, brief as it was, had been valuable to
the regiments, and it had been of the utmost importance to secure
the re-enlistment of those which had received some instruction. It
had been, in the condition of the statute law, from necessity and
not from choice that the Administration had called out the state
militia for ninety days. The new term of enrolment was for "three
years or the war," and the forces were now designated as United
States Volunteers. It would have been well if the period of
apprenticeship could have been prolonged; but events would not wait.
All recognized the necessity, and thankful as we should have been
for a longer preparation and more thorough instruction, we were
eager to be ordered away.
McClellan had been made a major-general in the regular army, and a
department had been placed under his command which included the
States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, to which was added a little
later West Virginia north of the Great Kanawha. [Footnote:
McClellan's Report and Campaigns (New York, 1864), p. 8. McClellan's
Own Story, p. 44. Official Records, vol. ii. p. 633.] Rosecrans was
also appointed a brigadier-general in the regulars, and there was
much debate at the time whether the Administration had intended
this. Many insisted that he was nominated for the volunteer service,
and that the regular appointment was a clerical mistake in the
bureaus at Washington. There was no solid foundation for this
gossip. A considerable increase of the regular army was authorized
by law, and corresponding appointments were made, from major-general
downward. It was at this time that Sherman was made colonel of one
of the new regiments of regulars. It would perhaps have been wiser
to treat the regular commissions as prizes to be won only by
conspicuous and successful service in the field, as was done later;
but this policy was not then adopted, and the newly created offices
were filled in all grades. They were, of course, given to men from
whom great services could reasonably be expected; but when none had
been tested in the great operations of war, every appointment was at
the risk that the officer might not show the special talent for
command which makes a general. It was something of a lottery, at
best; but the system would have been improved if a method of
retiring inefficient officers had been adopted at once. The
ostensible reason for the different organization of volunteers and
regulars was that the former, as a temporary force to meet an
exigency, might be wholly disbanded when the war should end, without
affecting the permanent army, which was measured in size by the
needs of the country in its normal condition.