VOLUNTEERS AND REGULARS
High quality of first volunteers--Discipline milder than that of the
regulars--Reasons for the difference--Practical efficiency of the
men--Necessity for sifting the officers--Analysis of their
defects--What is military aptitude?--Diminution of number in
ascending scale--Effect of age--Of former life and
occupation--Embarrassments of a new business--Quick progress of the
right class of young men--Political appointments--Professional
men--Political leaders naturally prominent in a civil war--"Cutting
and trying"--Dishonest methods--An excellent army at the end of a
year--The regulars in 1861--Entrance examinations for West
Point--The curriculum there--Drill and experience--Its
limitations--Problems peculiar to the vast increase of the
army--Ultra-conservatism--Attitude toward the Lincoln
administration--"Point de zéle"--Lack of initiative--Civil work of
army engineers--What is military art?--Opinions of experts--Military
history--European armies in the Crimean War--True
generalship--Anomaly of a double army organization.
The work of sifting the material for an army which went on through
the winter of 1861-62, naturally suggests an analysis of the classes
of men who composed both parts of the military force of the
nation,--the volunteers and the regulars. I need add nothing to what
I have already said of the unexampled excellence of the rank and
file in the regiments raised by the first volunteering. Later in the
war, when "bounty jumping" and substitution for conscripts came into
play, the character of the material, especially that recruited in
the great cities and seaports, was much lower. I think, however,
that the volunteers were always better men, man for man, than the
average of those recruited for the regular army. The rigidity of
discipline did not differ so much between good volunteer regiments
and regulars, as the mode of enforcing it. There were plenty of
volunteer regiments that could not be excelled in drill, in the
performance of camp duty, or in the finish and exactness of all the
forms of parades and of routine. But it was generally brought about
by much milder methods of discipline. A captain of volunteers was
usually followed by his neighbors and relatives. The patriotic zeal
of the men of the company as well as their self-respect made them
easily amenable to military rule so far as it tended to fit them
better to do the noble work they had volunteered for, and on which
their hearts were as fully set as the hearts of their colonels or
generals. In the regular army, officers and men belonged to
different castes, and a practically impassable barrier was between
them. Most of the men who had enlisted in the long years of domestic
peace were, for one cause or another, outcasts, to whom life had
been a failure and who followed the recruiting sergeant as a last
desperate resource when every other door to a livelihood was shut.
[Footnote: Since inducements to enlist have been increased by
offering the chance to win a commission, I believe the quality of
the rank and file of the regulars has been much improved, and as a
natural consequence the officers have found it easy to enforce
discipline by less arbitrary methods.] The war made some change in
this, but the habits and methods of the officers had been formed
before that time and under the old surroundings. The rule was
arbitrary, despotic, often tyrannical, and it was notorious that the
official bearing and the language used toward the regular soldiers
was out of the question in a volunteer organization. Exceptions
could be found in both parts of the service, but there could be no
doubt as to the custom and the rule. To know how to command
volunteers was explicitly recognized by our leading generals as a
quality not found in many regular officers, and worth noting when
found. A volunteer regiment might have a "free and easy" look to the
eye of a regular drill sergeant, but in every essential for good
conduct and ready manoeuvre on the field of battle, or for heroic
efforts in the crisis of a desperate engagement, it could not be
excelled if its officers had been reasonably competent and faithful.
There was inevitable loss of time in the organization and
instruction of a new army of volunteers; but after the first year in
the field, in every quality which tends to give victory in battle to
a popular cause, the volunteer regiment was, in my judgment,
unquestionably superior. It is necessary to say this, because there
has been a fashion of speaking of regular regiments or brigades in
the civil war as though they were capable of accomplishing more in
proportion to their numbers or on some occasion of peculiar peril
than the volunteers. I did not find it so.
The material in the line, then, was as good as could be; the
weakness was in the officers, and it was here that the sifting was
necessary. Most of these officers had themselves enlisted as
privates, and their patriotic zeal was not to be questioned. They
had been chosen to be lieutenants, captains, and even colonels by
their men because of faith in their ability to lead, or to recognize
their influence in raising the troops. Yet a considerable part of
them proved incompetent to command. The disqualifications were
various. Some lacked physical strength and stamina. Some had or
quickly developed intemperate habits. Some lacked the education and
intelligence needful for official responsibility. Some were too
indolent to apply themselves to the work of disciplining themselves
or their men. Fitness for command is a very general term, yet it
implies a set of qualities which intelligent people easily
understand and attach to the phrase. Self-command is proverbially
one of the chief. Courage and presence of mind are indispensable.
Ability to decide and firmness to stick to a decision are necessary.
Intelligence enough to understand the duties demanded of him and to
instruct his subordinates in theirs is another requisite. But beside
all these, there is a constitution of body and mind for which we can
find no better name than military aptitude. For lack of it many
estimable, intelligent, and brave men failed as officers. Again, not
every good captain made a good colonel, and not every good brigade
commander was fit for a division or a larger command. There was a
constantly widening test of capacity, and a rapid thinning of the
numbers found fit for great responsibilities until the command of
great armies was reached, when two or three names are all that we
can enumerate as having been proven during the four years of our
civil strife to be fully equal to the task.
Besides the indications of unfitness for the subordinate commands
which I have mentioned, another classification may be made. In an
agricultural community (and the greater part of our population was
and is agricultural), a middle-aged farmer who had been thrifty in
business and had been a country magistrate or a representative in
the legislature, would be the natural leader in his town or county,
and if his patriotism prompted him to set the example of enlisting,
he would probably be chosen to a company office, and perhaps to a
field office in the regiment. Absolutely ignorant of tactics, he
would find that his habits of mind and body were too fixed, and that
he could not learn the new business into which he had plunged. He
would be abashed at the very thought of standing before a company
and shouting the word of command. The tactical lessons conned in his
tent would vanish in a sort of stage-fright when he tried to
practise them in public. Some would overcome the difficulty by
perseverance, others would give it up in despair and resign, still
others would hold on from pride or shame, until some pressure from
above or below would force them to retire. Some men of this stamp
had personal fighting qualities which kept them in the service in
spite of their tactical ignorance, like brave old Wolford of
Kentucky, of whom it used to be jocosely said, that the command by
which he rallied his cavalry regiment was "Huddle on the Hill,
boys!"
A man wholly without business training would always be in
embarrassment, though his other qualifications for military life
were good. Even a company has a good deal of administrative business
to do. Accounts are to be kept, rations, clothing, arms,
accoutrements, and ammunition are to be receipted and accounted for.
Returns of various kinds are to be made, applications for furlough,
musters, rolls, and the like make a good deal of clerical work, and
though most of it may fall on the first sergeant, the captain and
commissioned officers must know how it should be done and when it is
well done, or they are sure to get into trouble. It was a very rare
thing for a man of middle age to make a good company officer. A good
many who tried it at the beginning had to be eliminated from the
service in one way or another. In a less degree the same was found
to hold true of the regimental field officers. Some men retain
flexibility of mind and body longer than others, and could more
easily adapt themselves to new circumstances and a new occupation.
Of course such would succeed best. But it is also true that in the
larger and broader commands solidity of judgment and weight of
character were more essential than in the company, and the
experience of older men was a more valuable quality. Such reasons
will account for the fact that youth seemed to be an almost
essential requisite for a company officer, whilst it was not so in
the same degree in the higher positions.
It was astonishing to see the rapidity with which well-educated and
earnest young men progressed as officers. They were alert in both
mind and body. They quickly grasped the principles of their new
profession, and with very little instruction made themselves masters
of tactics and of administrative routine. Add to this, bravery of
the highest type and a burning zeal in the cause they were fighting
for, and a campaign or two made them the peers of any officers of
their grade in our own or any other army.
Another class which cannot be omitted and which is yet very hard to
define accurately, is that of the "political appointments."
Of the learned professions, the lawyers were of course most strongly
represented among officers of the line. The medical men were so
greatly needed in their own professional department that it was hard
to find a sufficient number of suitable age and proper skill to
supply the regiments with surgeons and the hospitals with a proper
staff. The clergy were non-combatants by profession, and a few only
were found in other than chaplain's duty. Civil engineers, railroad
contractors, architects, and manufacturers were well represented and
were valuable men. Scarce any single qualification was more useful
in organizing the army than that of using and handling considerable
bodies of men such as mechanics and railway employees.
The profession of the law is in our country so closely allied to
political activity that the lawyers who put on the uniform were most
likely to be classed among political appointments. The term was
first applied to men like Banks, Butler, Baker, Logan, and Blair,
most of whom left seats in Congress to serve in the army. If they
had not done so, it would have been easy for critics to say that the
prominent politicians took care to keep their own bodies out of
harm's way. Most of them won hard-earned and well-deserved fame as
able soldiers before the war was over. In an armed struggle which
grew out of a great political contest, it was inevitable that eager
political partisans should be among the most active in the new
volunteer organizations. They called meetings, addressed the people
to rouse their enthusiasm, urged enlistments, and often set the
example by enrolling their own names first. It must be kept
constantly in mind that we had no militia organization that bore any
appreciable proportion to the greatness of the country's need, and
that at any rate the policy of relying upon volunteering at the
beginning was adopted by the government. It was a foregone
conclusion that popular leaders of all grades must largely officer
the new troops. Such men might be national leaders or leaders of
country neighborhoods; but big or little, they were the necessity of
the time. It was the application of the old Yankee story, "If the
Lord _will_ have a church in Paxton, he must take _sech as ther' be_
for deacons."
I have, in a former chapter, given my opinion that the government
made a mistake in following General Scott's advice to keep its
regular army intact and forbid its officers from joining volunteer
regiments; but good or bad, that advice was followed at the
beginning, and the only possible thing to do next was to let popular
selection and natural leadership of any sort determine the company
organizations. The governors of States generally followed a similar
rule in the choice of field officers, and selected the general
officers from those in the state militia, or from former officers of
the army retired to civil life. In one sense, therefore, the whole
organization of the volunteer force might be said to be political,
though we heard more of "political generals" than we did of
political captains or lieutenants. When the organization of the
United States Volunteers took the place of the state contingents
which formed the "three months' service," the appointments by the
President were usually selections from those acting already under
state appointment. The National Government was more conservative
than the Confederacy in this respect. Our service was always full of
colonels doing duty as brigadiers and brigadiers doing duty as
major-generals, whilst the Southern army usually had a brigadier for
every brigade and a major-general for every division, with
lieutenant-generals and generals for the highest commands. If some
rigid method had been adopted for mustering out all officers whom
the government, after a fair trial, was unwilling to trust with the
command appropriate to their grade, there would have been little to
complain of; but an evil which grew very great was that men in high
rank were kept upon the roster after it was proven that they were
incompetent, and when no army commander would willingly receive them
as his subordinates. Nominal commands at the rear or of a merely
administrative kind were multiplied, and still many passed no small
part of the war "waiting orders." As the total number of general
officers was limited by law, it followed, of course, that promotion
had to be withheld from many who had won it by service in the field.
This evil, however, was not peculiar to the class of appointments
from civil life. The faults in the first appointments were such as
were almost necessarily connected with the sudden creation of a vast
army. The failure to provide for a thorough test and sifting of the
material was a governmental error. It was palliated by the necessity
of conciliating influential men, and of avoiding antagonisms when
the fate of the nation trembled in the balance; but this was a
political motive, and the evil was probably endured in spite of its
well-known tendency to weaken the military service.
A few months' campaigning in the field got us rid of most of the
"town-meeting style" of conducting military affairs in the army
itself, though nothing could cure the practice on the part of
unscrupulous men of seeking reputation with the general public by
dishonest means. The newspapers were used to give fictitious credit
to some and to injure others. If the regular correspondents of the
press had been excluded from the camps, there would no doubt have
been surreptitious correspondence which would have found its way
into print through private and roundabout channels. But this again
was not a vice peculiar to officers appointed from civil life. It
should be always remembered that honorable conduct and devoted
patriotism was the rule, and self-seeking vanity and ambition the
exception; yet a few exceptions would be enough to disturb the
comfort of a large command. To sum up, the only fair way to estimate
the volunteer army is by its work and its fitness for work after the
formative period was passed, and when the inevitable mistakes and
the necessary faults of its first organization had been measurably
cured. My settled judgment is that it took the field in the spring
of 1862 as well fitted for its work as any army in the world, its
superior excellences in the most essential points fully balancing
the defects which were incident to its composition.
This opinion is not the offspring of partiality toward the volunteer
army on the part of one himself a volunteer. It was shared by the
most active officers in the field who came from the regular service.
In their testimony given in various ways during the war, in their
Official Records, and in their practical conduct in the field which
showed best of all where their reliance was placed, these officers
showed their full faith in and admiration for the volunteer
regiments. Such an opinion was called out by the Committee on the
Conduct of the War in its examination of General Gibbon in regard to
the Gettysburg campaign, and his judgment may fairly be taken as
that of the better class of the regular officers. He declared of
some of these regiments in his division, that they were as well
disciplined as any men he ever wished to see; that their officers
had shown practical military talent; that a young captain from civil
life, whom he instanced, was worthy to be made a general. He named
regiments of volunteers which he said were among the finest
regiments that ever fought on any field, and in which every officer
was appointed from civil life. [Footnote: Report of Committee on
Conduct of the War, vol. iv. pp. 444-446.] He added the criticism
which I have above made, that no proper method of getting rid of
incompetent officers and of securing the promotion of the
meritorious had been adopted; but this in no way diminishes the
force of his testimony that every kind of military ability was
abundantly found in our volunteer forces and needed only recognition
and encouragement. It would be easy to multiply evidence on this
subject. General Grant is a witness whose opinion alone may be
treated as conclusive. In his Personal Memoirs [Footnote: Personal
Memoirs of U. S. Grant, vol. i. p. 573.] he explicitly and
unqualifiedly says that at the close of the Vicksburg campaign his
troops fulfilled every requirement of an army, and his volunteer
officers were equal to any duty, some of them being in his judgment
competent to command an independent army in the field. Sherman fully
shared this opinion. [Footnote: Letter to Halleck, Official Records,
vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 413.]
In trying to form a just estimate of the officers of the regular
army in 1861, we have to consider not only their education, but the
character of their military life and experience up to that time. It
is, on the whole, a salutary popular notion that "professionals" in
any department of work are more likely to succeed than amateurs. At
the beginning of the Civil War our only professional soldiers were
the officers of our little regular army, nearly all of whom were
graduates of the West Point Military Academy. Since the Mexican War
of 1848, petty conflicts with Indians on the frontier had been their
only warlike experience. The army was hardly larger than a single
division, and its posts along the front of the advancing wave of
civilization from the mouth of the Rio Grande to the Canada border
were so numerous that it was a rare thing to see more than two or
three companies of soldiers together. To most of the officers their
parade of the battalion of cadets at West Point was the largest
military assemblage they had ever seen. Promotion had been so slow
that the field officers were generally superannuated, and very few
who had a rank higher than that of captain at the close of 1860 did
any active field work on either side during the Civil War. The total
number of captains and lieutenants of the line would hardly have
furnished colonels for the volunteer regiments of the single State
of New York as they were finally mustered into the National service
during the war; and they would have fallen far short of it when
their own numbers were divided by the rebellion itself.
Our available professional soldiers, then, were captains and
subalterns whose experience was confined to company duty at frontier
posts hundreds of miles from civilization, except in the case of the
engineers, the staff corps, and some of the artillery in sea-coast
forts. With the same exceptions, the opportunities for enlarging
their theoretic knowledge had been small. It was before the days of
post libraries, and books of any sort were a rarity at the
garrisons. In the first year of the war, I expressed to General
Gordon Granger my surprise at finding how little most line officers
had added to the theoretic reading they got at the academy. "What
could you expect," he said in his sweeping way, "of men who have had
to spend their lives at a two-company post, where there was nothing
to do when off duty but play draw-poker and drink whiskey at the
sutler's shop?" This was, of course, meant to be picturesquely
extravagant, but it hit the nail on the head, after all. Some of the
officers of the old regime did not conceal their contempt for books.
It was a stock story in the army that when the Utah expedition was
fitting out in 1856, General Henry Hunt, chief of artillery of the
army of the Potomac, then a young artillery officer, applied to
General Twiggs, from whose command part of the expedition was making
up, for leave to take a little box of military books. "No, sir," was
the peremptory response; "no room in the train for such nonsense."
Hunt retired chop-fallen; but soon after another officer came in,
with "General, our mess has a keg of very nice whiskey we don't want
to lose; won't you direct the quartermaster to let it go in the
wagons?" "Oh yes, sir. Oh yes, anything in reason!" If not true, the
story is good enough to be true, as its currency attests; but
whether true or no, the "fable teaches" that post-graduate study in
the old army was done under difficulties.
The course of study at West Point had narrower limitations than most
people think, and it would be easy to be unfair by demanding too
much of the graduates of that military college. The course of study
was of four years, but the law forbade any entrance examinations on
subjects outside of the usual work done in the rural common schools.
The biographies of Grant, of Sherman, of Sheridan, of Ormsby
Mitchell, and of others show that they in fact had little or no
other preparatory education than that of the common country school.
[Footnote: Grant, in his Personal Memoirs (vol. i. p. 24), says of
the school in his early Ohio home, that the highest branches taught
there were "the three R's,--Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic. I
never saw," he says, "an algebra or other mathematical work higher
than the arithmetic, in Georgetown, until after I was appointed to
West Point. I then bought a work on algebra in Cincinnati, but
having no teacher it was Greek to me."] The course of study and
amount of education given must necessarily be limited, therefore, to
what boys of average ability and such preparation could accomplish
in the four years. They were no further advanced, on entering, than
they would have to be to enter any ordinary fitting school for one
of our first-class colleges, or the high schools in the graded
systems of public schools in our cities. Three years of study would
put them abreast of students entering college elsewhere, and four
years would carry them about as far as the end of the Freshman year
in Yale, Harvard, or Princeton. The corps of professors and teachers
at West Point has always deservedly ranked high as instructors, but
there is no "royal road" to knowledge, and it cannot be claimed that
three or four years at the Military Academy would count for more, as
general education, than the same period spent in any other good
school. A very few men of high standing in the classes supplemented
their education by obtaining appointments as temporary instructors
in the academy after graduating, but most of them left their books
behind them and began at once the subaltern's life at the distant
frontier post.
If we analyze the course of study they pursued, we find that it
covered two years' work in mathematics, one in physics and
chemistry, and one in construction of fortifications. This was the
scientific part, and was the heaviest part of the curriculum. Then,
besides a little English, mental philosophy, moral philosophy, and
elementary law, there were two years' study of the French and one of
Spanish. This was the only linguistic study, and began with the
simplest elements. At the close of the war there was no instruction
in strategy or grand tactics, in military history, or in what is
called the Art of War. The little book by Mahan on Out-post Duty was
the only text-book in Theory, outside the engineering proper. At an
earlier day they had used Jomini's introduction to his "Grandes
Opérations Militaires," and I am unable to say when its use was
dropped. It is not my wish to criticise the course of study; on the
other hand, I doubt if it could be much improved for boys who had
only the preparation required by the law. But since we are trying to
estimate its completeness as professional education fitting men to
command armies in the field, it is absolutely necessary to note the
fact that it did not pretend to include the military art in that
sense. Its scientific side was in the line of engineering and that
only. Its prize-men became engineers, and success at the academy was
gauged by the student's approach to that coveted result.
That the French which was learned was not enough to open easily to
the young lieutenant the military literature which was then found
most abundantly in that language, would seem to be indicated by the
following incident. In my first campaign I was talking with a
regular officer doing staff duty though belonging in the line, and
the conversation turned on his West Point studies. The little work
of Jomini's mentioned above being casually referred to as having
been in his course, I asked him if he had continued his reading into
the History of the Seven Years' War of Frederick the Great, to which
it was the introduction. He said no, and added frankly that he had
not read even the Introduction in the French, which he had found
unpleasantly hard reading, but in the English translation published
under the title of the Art of War. This officer was a thoroughly
estimable, modest, and intelligent man, and seemed in no way
inferior to other line officers of his age and grade. It would of
course be true that some men would build industriously upon the
foundation laid at the academy, and perfect themselves in those
things of which they had only acquired the elements; but the
surroundings of frontier life at a post were so unfavorable that I
believe few in fact did so. The officers of the engineer corps and
the ordnance were specifically devoted to scientific careers, and
could go steadily forward to expertness in their specialties. Those
who were permanently attached to the staff corps or to bureaus at
Washington had also opportunity to enlarge their professional
knowledge by study if they were so inclined. But all these were
exceptionally situated, and do not help us answer the question What
kind and amount of military education was implied in the fact that a
man had graduated at West Point and been sent to serve in the line?
I have purposely omitted for the present to consider the physical
training and the practical instruction in tactics by means of drill,
because the question is in terms one of science, not of practice;
that will come later. The conclusion is that the intellectual
education at the Military Academy was essentially the same, as far
as it went, as that of any polytechnic school, the peculiarly
military part of it being in the line of engineering. In actual
warfare, the laying out and construction of regular forts or the
conduct of a regular siege is committed to professional engineers.
For field work with an army, therefore, the mental furnishing of the
West Point man was not superior to that of any other liberally
educated man. In some of our volunteer regiments we had whole
companies of private soldiers who would not have shunned a
competitive examination with West Point classes on the studies of
the Military Academy, excepting the technical engineering of
fortifications. [Footnote: It must not be forgotten that my
criticisms are strictly confined to the condition of military
education in our Civil War period. Since that time some excellent
work has been done in post-graduate schools for the different arms
of the service, and field manoeuvres have been practised on a scale
never known in our army prior to 1861. A good beginning has also
been made, both here and in England, toward giving the young soldier
a military library of English books.]
Let us look now at the physical and practical training of the cadet.
The whole period of his student life at West Point had more or less
of this. He was taken as a raw recruit would be, taught the school
of the soldier in marching, in the manual of arms, and in personal
carriage. He passed on to the drill of the squad, the platoon, the
company. The tactics of the battalion came last, and the cadet might
become a corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, or captain in the corps if
he showed aptitude for drill and tactics. It is noticeable, however,
that Grant and Sheridan remained privates during their whole
cadetship, and Sherman, though once he became sergeant, was put back
in the ranks. The fair conclusion is that this part of the cadet
discipline is not very closely connected with generalship, though it
is important as preparation for the ready handling of a company or a
battalion. Sherman tells us, in his Memoirs, that he studied
evolutions of the line out of the books, as a new subject, when he
was in camp in front of Washington, after the first battle of Bull
Run. [Footnote: Memoirs, vol. i. p. 220.] The tactical education of
the cadet stopped at the evolutions of the battalion, and for nearly
all of them it was, even in that respect, the education of the
soldier in the ranks and not of the officer, since a very small
proportion became officers in the cadet corps.
This practical drill was, of course, the same as that which was used
in organized militia regiments, and the famous Ellsworth Zouaves of
Chicago, the New York Seventh Regiment, with a number of other
militia regiments in different States, were sufficient proof that
this training could be made as exact outside of the cadet corps as
in it. It certainly was enough for the practical handling of the
company and the regiment under the simplified tactics which not only
prevailed during the war itself, but, with Upton's Manual as a
basis, has been authoritatively adopted as an improvement upon the
older and more complicated methods. It must not be forgotten that
although our militia system had fallen into scandalous neglect, the
voluntary efforts of citizen soldiers had kept many good independent
companies organized everywhere, as well as full regiments in most of
the older States; so that there were in fact more well-drilled
regiments in the militia than there were in the little regular army.
It was the small ratio all these, of both classes, bore to the
demands of the gigantic war that was upon us, which made the problem
so troublesome. The officers of the organized militia regiments,
before the end of the three months' service, did what I have said it
was desirable that those of the regular regiments should have
done,--they scattered from their original commands and were active
in organizing the new volunteer regiments. General De Trobriand, who
went out as Colonel of the Fifty-fifth New York, says that the New
York Seventh Regiment furnished three hundred officers to volunteer
regiments. [Footnote: De Trobriand, Four Years with Potomac Army, p.
64.] In a similar way, though not to the same extent, the other
organized and disciplined militia, in both Eastern and Western
States, furnished the skeletons of numerous new regiments.
The really distinguishing feature in the experience of the regular
officers of the line was their life in garrison at their posts, and
their active work in guarding the frontier. Here they had become
familiar with duty of the limited kind which such posts would
afford. This in time became a second nature to them, and to the
extent it reached, was, as other men's employments are, their
business. They necessarily had to learn pretty thoroughly the army
regulations, with the methods and forms of making returns and
conducting business with the adjutant-general's office, with the
ordnance office, the quartermaster's and subsistence departments,
etc. In this ready knowledge of the army organization and its
methods their advantage over the new volunteer officers was more
marked, as it seemed to me, than in any and all other things. The
routine of army business and the routine of drill had to be learned
by every army officer. The regular officer of some years' standing
already knew, as a matter of course, what a new volunteer officer
must spend some time in learning. There is something of value also
in the habit of mind formed in actual service, even if the service
is in subaltern grades and on a petty scale. Familiarity with danger
and with the expectation of danger is acquired, both by the Indian
wars of the frontier and by the hunting and field sports which fill
more or less of the leisure of garrison life.
But there were some drawbacks upon the value of the preparation for
war which these officers possessed. There was a marked conservatism
as to military methods and arms, and an almost slavish reverence for
things which were sanctioned by European authority, especially that
of the second French Empire. American invention was never more
fruitful than when applied to military weapons. Repeating and
magazine small arms, breach-loading cannon, and Gatling guns with
other repeating artillery, were brought out or improved with
wonderful variety of form and of demonstrable excellence. The
regular army influence was generally against such innovations. Not
once, but frequently, regular army officers argued to me that the
old smooth-bore musket with "buck and ball" cartridge was the best
weapon our troops could desire. We went through the war with a
muzzle-loading musket, the utmost that any commander could do being
to secure repeating rifles for two or three infantry regiments in a
whole army. Even to the end the "regular" chiefs of artillery
insisted that the Napoleon gun, a light smooth-bore twelve-pounder
cannon, was our best field-piece, and at a time when a great
campaign had reduced our forces so that a reduction of artillery was
advisable, I received an order to send to the rear my three-inch
rifled ordnance guns and retain my Napoleons. The order was issued
by a regular officer of much experience, but I procured its
suspension in my own command by a direct appeal to the army
commander. There was no more doubt then than there is to-day of the
superiority of rifled guns, either for long-range practice with
shells or in close work with canister. They were so much lighter
that we could jump them across a rough country where the teams could
hardly move a Napoleon. We could subdue our adversaries' fire with
them, when their smooth-bores could not reach us. Yet we were
ordered to throw away our advantages and reduce ourselves to our
enemy's condition upon the obstinate prejudice of a worthy man who
had had all flexibility drilled out of him by routine. Models of
automatic rapid-fire and repeating field-pieces were familiar
objects "at the rear," but I saw none of them in action in any army
in which I served. The conservatism of the old army must be held
responsible for this.
The question of zeal and devotion to the cause for which we fought
cannot be ignored in such a war as ours was. It is notorious that
comparatively few of the regular officers were political friends of
Mr. Lincoln's administration at the beginning. Of those who did not
"go with the South" but remained true to the National flag, some
were full of earnest patriotism, like the young officers whom I have
mentioned as volunteering to assist the governors of States in
organizing their contingents and as seeking places in volunteer
regiments. There were others who meant to do their duty, but began
with little hopefulness or zeal. There were still others who did not
hesitate to predict defeat and to avow that it was only for
professional honor or advancement that they continued to serve under
the National flag. These last were confessedly soldiers of fortune.
The war was an education for all who were in it, and many a man
began with reluctance and half-heartedness who was abundantly
radical before the conflict was over. There was, however, a
considerable class who practised on Talleyrand's diplomatic motto,
"point de zèle," and limited their efforts to the strict requirement
of duty. Such men would see disaster occur for lack of a little
spontaneity on their part, and yet be able to show that they
literally obeyed every order received. I was once ordered to support
with my command a movement to be made by another. It was an
important juncture in a campaign. Wondering at delay, I rode forward
and found the general officer I was to support. I told him I was
ordered to support him in doing what we both saw was needing to be
done; but he had no explicit orders to begin the movement. I said
that my orders to support him were sufficient to authorize his
action, and it was plain that it would be unfortunate if the thing
were not done at once. He answered cynically, "If you had been in
the army as long as I have, you would be content to do the things
that are ordered, without hunting up others." The English regulars,
also, have a saying, "Volunteering brings bad luck."
There was altogether too much of this spirit in the army, and one
who can read between the lines will see it in the history of many a
campaign. It did not necessarily mean wavering loyalty. It was
sometimes the mental indecision or timidity which shrinks from
responsibility. It was sometimes also the result of education in an
army on the peace establishment, where any spontaneity was snubbed
as an impertinence or tyrannically crushed as a breach of
discipline. I would not be understood to make more of these things
than is necessary to a just estimate of the situation, but it seems
to me an entirely fair conclusion that with us in 1861 as with the
first French republic, the infusion of the patriotic enthusiasm of a
volunteer organization was a necessity, and that this fully made up
for lack of instruction at the start. This hasty analysis of what
the actual preparation for war was in the case of the average line
officer of the regular army will show, to some extent, the basis of
my judgment that there was nothing in it which a new volunteer
officer, having what I have called military aptitude, should not
learn in his first campaign.
How far the officers of the engineers and of the staff corps applied
themselves to general military study, would depend upon their taste
and their leisure. Their opportunities for doing so were much better
than those of line officers, but there was also a tendency to
immerse themselves in the studies of their special department of
work. Very eminent officers of engineers have told me since the war
that the pressure of their special professional work was such that
they had found no time to read even the more noteworthy publications
concerning the history of our own great struggle. The surveys of the
great lakes and the coast, the engineering problems of our great
rivers, etc., have both formerly and in recent years absorbed their
time and their strength. The ordnance and the staff corps, also, had
abundant special duties. Still it may reasonably be assumed that
officers of the classes mentioned have usually made themselves
somewhat familiar with the best writings on military art. If we had
in the country in 1861 a class of men who could be called educated
soldiers in the scientific sense, we certainly should find them in
the several corps just referred to.
Here, however, we have to meet the question What is military art as
applied to the problem of winning battles or campaigns? We are
obliged to answer that outside of the business administration and
supply of an army, and apart from the technical knowledge of
engineering and the construction of fire-arms and ammunition, it
consists in the tactical handling of bodies of men in accordance
with very few and very simple principles of strategy. The literature
of the subject is found in the history of wars analyzed by competent
men like Napoleon, Jomini, the Archduke Charles, Sir William Napier,
Clausewitz, Moltke, Hamley, and others; but it may be broadly said
that the principles of this criticism and analysis may be so briefly
stated as to be printed on the back of a visiting-card. [Footnote:
Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, in his admirable "Letters on
Strategy," states them in five brief primary axioms. Letters on
Strategy, vol. i. pp. 9, 10.] To trace the campaigns of great
soldiers under the guidance of such a critic as Jomini is full of
interest to any intelligent person, and there is nothing in the
subject of the slightest difficulty of comprehension if full and
authentic topographical maps are before the reader. To make much
instructive use of military history in this way demands a good deal
of voluminous reading and the command of charts and maps extensive
enough to allow the presentation of the face of a country on a large
scale. With these advantages all wars, both ancient and modern, are
full of instructive examples of the application of the simple
principles of strategy under innumerable varying circumstances and
situations; and this union of simple theory in ever-changing
practical application is what constitutes the theoretic knowledge of
the general as distinguished from the tactical and administrative
duties of the subordinate. [Footnote: Jomini expresses it thus:
"J'en couclus que l'histoire militaire raisonnèe de plusieurs
campagnes, seront la meilleure Ecole pour apprendre et par
conséquent pour enseigner la grande guerre: _la science des
géneraux._" Grandes Operations Militaires, vol. i. p. 7.] It was the
very simplicity of the principles that made many successful generals
question whether there was any art in the matter, except to use
courage and natural sagacity in the actual situation in which the
commander found himself and the enemy. Marshal Saxe asserted in his
"Rêveries" that down to his time there had been no formulation of
principles, and that if any had been recognized as such in the minds
of commanders of armies, they had not made it known. [Footnote:
Jomini, in the work already cited, quotes Marshal Saxe thus: "Que
toutes les sciences avaient des principes, mais que la guerre seule
n'en avait point encore; si ces principes ont existé dans la tête de
quelques généraux, nulle part ils n'ont été indiqués ou développés."
The same idea has been put quite as trenchantly by one of the most
recent writers of the English Army, Colonel J. F. Maurice, R. A.
Professor in the Farnborough Staff College. In the able article on
"War" in the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he says,
"it must be emphatically asserted that there does not exist, and
never except by pedants of whom the most careful students of war are
more impatient than other soldiers, has there ever been supposed to
exist, an 'art of war' which was something other than the methodic
study of military history."]
It was precisely in this department of military history "raisonnée"
that frontier garrison life shut the young army officer out from the
opportunities of profiting by his leisure. The valuable books were
all foreign publications in costly form with folio atlases, and were
neither easy to procure nor easily carried about with the limited
means and the rigid economy of transportation which marked army life
in the far West. That this was true even in the artillery is
indicated by General Gibbon before the Committee on the Conduct of
the War when questioned in reference to the relative amount of
artillery used at Gettysburg as compared with great European
battles; that distinguished officer having himself been in the
artillery when the Civil War began. [Footnote: "Question. You have
studied the history of battles a great deal: Now, in the battles of
Napoleon, had they at any time half as many artillery engaged as
there were at Gettysburg? Answer. I am not sufficiently conversant
with military history to tell you that. I think it very doubtful
whether more guns were ever used in any one battle before. I do not
believe Napoleon ever had a worse artillery fire." Testimony of
General John Gibbon, Committee on Conduct of the War, vol. iv. p.
444. At Gettysburg the whole number of cannon employed was about two
hundred. Compare this with Leipzig, for instance, the "battle of the
giants," where _two thousand_ were employed! Thiers says, "de
Leipzig à Schönfeld au nord, de Schönfeld à Probstheyda à l'est, de
Probstheyda à Connewitz au sud, une cannonade de deux mille bouches
à feu termina cette bataille dit des géants, et jusqu'ici la plus
grande, certainement, de tous les siecles." Thiers, Consulat et
l'Empire, vol. xvi. p. 607.]
If then the officers of the regular army, as a body, were not in
fact deeply read in what, as we have seen, Jomini calls "the science
of generals," their advantage over equally well-educated civilians
is reduced to a practical knowledge of the duties of the company and
the petty post, and in comparison with the officers of well-drilled
militia companies it amounted to little more than a better knowledge
of the army regulations and the administrative processes. It is no
reproach to them that this was so, for it resulted from the
operation of law in the course of education at the Military Academy
and the insignificant size of our army in times of peace. It had
been the peculiar blessing of our country that a great standing army
was unnecessary, and it would be foolish to regret that our little
army could not have the experience with great bodies of troops and
the advantages of theoretical instruction which are part of the life
of officers in the immense establishments of Continental Europe. My
only purpose is to make an approximately true balance sheet of the
actual advantages of the two parts of our National army in 1861.
Whilst on the subject, however, I will go a little further and say
that prior to our Civil War, the history of European conflicts
proves that there also the theoretic preparation of military men had
not, up to that time, saved them from the necessity of learning both
generalship and army administration in the terrible school of
experience, during their first year in the field when a new war
broke out after a long interval of peace.
The first volume of Kinglake's "Crimean War" appeared in 1863, and I
immediately and eagerly devoured it for the purpose of learning the
lesson it could teach. It was one of the memorable sensations of a
lifetime, to find that the regular armies of England, of France, and
of Russia had had to learn their lesson anew when they faced each
other on the shore of the Euxine, and that, whether in matters of
transportation, of subsistence, of the hospital, of grand tactics,
or of generalship, they had no advantage over our army of volunteers
fresh from their peaceful pursuits. The photographic fidelity to
detail on the part of the historian, and his apparent
unconsciousness of the sweeping conclusions to be drawn from his
pictures, made the lesson all the more telling. I drew a long breath
of relief, and nothing which happened to me in the whole war so
encouraged me to hopeful confidence in the outcome of it, as the
evidence I saw that our blunders at the beginning had been no
greater than those of old standing armies, and that our capacity to
learn was at least as quick as theirs. Their experience, like ours,
showed that the personal qualities of a commanding officer counted
for much more than his theoretic equipment, and that a bold heart, a
cool head, and practical common-sense were of much more importance
than anything taught at school. With these, a brief experience would
enable an intelligent man to fill nearly any subordinate position
with fair success; without them any responsibility of a warlike kind
would prove too heavy for him. The supreme qualification of a
general-in-chief is the power to estimate truly and grasp clearly
the situation on a field of operations too large to be seen by the
physical eye at once, [Footnote: Wellington said the great task of
his military life was "trying to make out what was behind the
hill."] and the undaunted temper of will which enables him to
execute with persistent vigor the plan which his intellect approves.
To act upon uncertainties as if they were sure, and to do it in the
midst of carnage and death when immeasurable results hang upon
it,--this is the supreme presence of mind which marks a great
commander, and which is among the rarest gifts even of men who are
physically brave. The problem itself is usually simple. It is the
confusing and overwhelming situation under which it must be solved
that causes timidity or dismay. It is the thought of the fearful
consequences of the action that begets a nervous state of hesitation
and mental timidity in most men, and paralyzes the will. No
education will ensure this greatest and most essential quality. It
is born in a man, not communicated. With it his acquired knowledge
will be doubly useful, but without it an illiterate slave-trader
like Forrest may far outshine him as a soldier. Nor does success as
a subordinate give any certain assurance of fitness for supreme
command. Napoleon's marshals generally failed when trusted with an
independent command, as Hooker did with us; and I do not doubt that
many men, like McClellan, who failed as generals-in-chief, would
have made brave and good subordinates. The test of quality is
different in kind, and, as I have said, the only proof of its
possession is in the actual trial. It is safe to say that a timid
subordinate will not be a good commander, but it cannot be affirmed
that a bold one will, though there are more chances in his favor.
The education of peril is so powerful in bringing out the qualities
that can master it, and for any one who has true military courage
the acquirement of skill in the more mechanical part of his duty in
war is so rapid, that my experience has led me to reckon low, in the
comparison, the value of the knowledge a soldier gains in times of
peace. I say "in the comparison." Tactics are essential to the
handling of large bodies of men, and must be learned. But the
zealous young soldier with aptitude for his work will learn this
part of his duty so fast that a single campaign will find him
abreast of any. At the beginning of a great war and in the
organization of a great army, the knowledge of routine and of
details undoubtedly saves time and saves cost both of treasure and
of life. I am therefore far from arguing that the knowledge which
was found in the regular army should not be made the most of. I have
already said that it should have been scattered through the whole
volunteer organization. So I also say that it was quite right to
look for the higher qualities for command in those who had the
technical information and skill. But I reckon patriotic zeal and
devotion so high that I have no hesitation in adding, that our army
as a whole would have been improved if the distinction between
regular and volunteer had been abolished, and, after the first
beginnings, a freer competition for even the highest commands had
been open to all. To keep up the regular army organization was
practically to say that a captaincy in it was equivalent to a
brigade command in the volunteers, and to be a brigadier in it was a
reward which regular officers looked forward to as a result of the
successful conduct of a great campaign as general-in-chief of an
army. The actual command in war was thus ridiculously belittled in
the official scale in comparison with grades of a petty peace
establishment, and the climax of absurdity was reached when, at the
close of hostilities, men who had worthily commanded divisions and
corps found themselves reduced to subordinate places in regiments,
whilst others who had vegetated without important activity in the
great struggle were outranking them by virtue of seniority in the
little army which had existed before the Rebellion!