WINTER QUARTERS, 1862-63--PROMOTIONS AND POLITICS
Central position of Marietta, Ohio--Connection with all parts of
West Virginia--Drill and instruction of troops--Guerilla
warfare--Partisan Rangers--Confederate laws--Disposal of
plunder--Mosby's Rangers as a type--Opinions of Lee, Stuart, and
Rosser--Effect on other troops--Rangers finally abolished--Rival
home-guards and militia--Horrors of neighborhood war--Staff and
staff duties--Reduction of forces--General Cluseret--Later
connection with the Paris Commune--His relations with Milroy--He
resigns--Political situation--Congressmen distrust Lincoln--Cutler's
diary--Resolutions regarding appointments of general officers--The
number authorized by law--Stanton's report--Effect of Act of July,
1862--An excess of nine major-generals--The legal questions
involved--Congressional patronage and local distribution--Ready for
a "deal"--Bill to increase the number of generals--A "slate" made up
to exhaust the number--Senate and House
disagree--Conference--Agreement in last hours of the session--The
new list--A few vacancies by resignation, etc.--List of those
dropped--My own case--Faults of the method--Lincoln's humorous
comments--Curious case of General Turchin--Congestion in the highest
grades--Effects--Confederate grades of general and
lieutenant-general--Superiority of our system--Cotemporaneous
reports and criticisms--New regiments instead of recruiting old
ones--Sherman's trenchant opinion.
Early in December I established my winter headquarters at Marietta
on the Ohio River, a central position from which communication could
be had most easily with all parts of the district and with
department headquarters. It was situated at the end of the railway
line from Cincinnati to the Ohio River near Parkersburg, where the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad met the Cincinnati line. The Baltimore
road, coming from the east, forked at Grafton in West Virginia and
reached Wheeling, as has been described in an earlier chapter.
[Footnote: _Ante_, pp. 40, 42.] The river was usually navigable
during the winter and made an easy communication with Wheeling as
with the lower towns. I was thus conveniently situated for most
speedily reaching every part of my command, in person or otherwise.
It took but a little while to get affairs so organized that the
routine of work ran on quietly and pleasantly. No serious effort was
made by the enemy to re-enter the district during the winter, and
except some local outbreaks of "bush-whacking" and petty guerilla
warfare, there was nothing to interrupt the progress of the troops
in drill and instruction.
A good deal of obscurity still hangs about the subject of guerilla
warfare, and the relation of the Confederate government to it. There
was, no doubt, a good deal of loose talk that found its way into
print and helped form a popular opinion, which treated almost every
scouting party as if it were a lawless organization of
"bush-whackers." But there was an authoritative and systematic
effort of the Richmond government to keep up partisan bodies within
our lines which should be soldiers when they had a chance to do us a
mischief, and citizens when they were in danger of capture and
punishment. When Fremont assumed command of the Mountain Department,
he very early called the attention of the Secretary of War to the
fact that Governor Letcher was sending commissions into West
Virginia, authorizing the recipients to enlist companies to be used
against us in irregular warfare. [Footnote: Official Records, vol.
xii. pt. iii. p. 75.]
The bands which were organized by the Confederate Government under
authority of law, but which were free from the control of army
commanders and unrestrained by the checks upon lawlessness which are
found in subordination to the operations of organized armies, were
called "Partisan Rangers," and protection as legitimate soldiers was
promised them. They were not required to camp with the army, or to
remain together as troops or regiments. They wore uniforms or not,
as the whim might take them. They remained, as much as they dared,
in their home region, and assembled, usually at night, at a
preconcerted signal from their leaders, to make a "raid." They were
not paid as the more regular troops were, but were allowed to keep
the horses which they captured or "lifted." They were nominally
required to turn over the beef-cattle and army stores to the
Confederate commissariat, but after a captured wagon-train had been
looted by them, not much of value would be found in it. Their raids
were made by such numbers as might chance to be got together.
Stuart, the brilliant Confederate cavalry commander, whilst
crediting Mosby with being the best of the partisans, said of him,
"he usually operates with only one-fourth of his nominal strength.
Such organizations, as a rule, are detrimental to the best interests
of the army at large." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxiii. p.
1082.] General Lee, in forwarding one of Mosby's reports, commended
his boldness and good management, but added: "I have heard that he
has now with him a large number of men, yet his expeditions are
undertaken with very few, and his attention seems more directed to
the capture of sutlers' wagons, etc., than to the injury of the
enemy's communications and outposts.... I do not know the cause for
undertaking his expeditions with so few men; whether it is from
policy or the difficulty of collecting them. I have heard of his
men, among them officers, being in rear of this army, selling
captured goods, sutlers' stores, etc. This had better be attended to
by others. It has also been reported to me that many deserters from
this army have joined him. Among them have been seen members of the
Eighth Virginia Regiment." [Footnote: _Id_., vol xxix. pt. ii.
p.652.] In the "Richmond Examiner" of August 18, 1863 (the same date
as General Lee's letter), was the statement that "At a sale of
Yankee plunder taken by Mosby and his men, held at Charlottesville
last week, thirty-odd thousand dollars were realized, to be divided
among the gallant band." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxix. pt.
ii. p. 653.]
The injury to the discipline of their own army gradually brought
leading officers of the Confederates to the conviction that the
"Partisan Rangers" cost more than they were worth. In January, 1864,
General Rosser, one of the most distinguished cavalry officers of
the South, made a formal communication to General Lee on the
subject. "During the time I have been in the valley," he said, "I
have had ample opportunity of judging of the efficiency and
usefulness of the many irregular bodies of troops which occupy this
country, known as partisans, etc., and am prompted by no other
feeling than a desire to serve my country, to inform you that they
are a nuisance and an evil to the service. Without discipline,
order, or organization, they roam broadcast over the country, a band
of thieves, stealing, pillaging, plundering, and doing every manner
of mischief and crime. They are a terror to the citizens and an
injury to the cause. They never fight; can't be made to fight. Their
leaders are generally brave, but few of the men are good soldiers,
and have engaged in this business for the sake of gain." [Footnote:
_Id_., vol. xxxiii. p. 1081.] After classifying the mischiefs to the
regular service, he continues: "It is almost impossible to manage
the different companies of my brigade that are from Loudoun,
Fauquier, Fairfax, etc., the region occupied by Mosby. They see
these men living at their ease and enjoying the comforts of home,
allowed to possess all that they capture, and their duties mere
pastime pleasures compared with their own arduous ones, and it is a
natural consequence, in the nature of man, that he should become
dissatisfied under these circumstances. Patriotism fails, in a long
and tedious war like this, to sustain the ponderous burdens which
bear heavily and cruelly upon the heart and soul of man." [Footnote:
Official Records, vol. xxxiii. p. 1081.] General Rosser recommended
the absorption of the partisan bodies into the ordinary brigades,
using their supposed talents for scouting by sending them on
expeditions as regular patrols and reconnoitring parties, reporting
to their proper command as soon as the duty was done.
It was upon Rosser's communication that Stuart made the endorsement
already quoted, and Lee sent it forward to the War Department,
further endorsed thus: "As far as my knowledge and experience
extend, there is much truth in the statement of General Rosser. I
recommend that the law authorizing these partisan corps be
abolished. The evils resulting from their organization more than
counterbalance the good they accomplish." The Secretary of War, Mr.
Siddon, drafted a bill to abolish them, and it passed the
Confederate House. Delay occurring in the Senate, the matter was
compromised by transferring all the Rangers except Mosby's and
McNeill's to the line. [Footnote: _Id_., pp. 1082, 1253.] As it was
to Mosby's that the reported facts applied, and all agreed that his
was the best of the lot, we may imagine what must have been the
character of the rest.
In the first two winters of the war, these organizations were in the
height of their pernicious activity, and the loyal West Virginians
were their favorite victims. We knew almost nothing of their
organization, except that they claimed some Confederate law for
their being. We seldom found them in uniform, and had no means of
distinguishing them from any other armed horse-stealers and
"bush-whackers." We were, however, made unpleasantly certain of the
fact that in every neighborhood where secession sentiments were
rife, our messengers were waylaid and killed, small parties were
ambushed, and all the exasperating forms of guerilla warfare were
abundant. Besides all this, the Confederate authorities assumed to
call out the militia of counties into which they were intending to
make an expedition, so that they might have the temporary
co-operation of local troops. They claimed the right to do this
because they had not recognized the separation of West Virginia, and
insisted that the whole was subject to the laws of Virginia. The
result was that the Union men formed companies of "Home Guards" for
self-protection, and the conflict of arms was carried into every
settlement in the mountain nooks and along the valleys. In this kind
of fighting there was no quarter given, or if prisoners were taken,
they were too often reported as having met with fatal accidents
before they could be handed over to the regular authorities. As all
this could have no effect upon the progress of the war, the more
cool and intelligent heads of both sides opposed it, and gradually
diminished it. Severe measures against it were in fact merciful, for
the horrors of war are always least when the fighting is left to the
armies of responsible belligerents, unprovoked by the petty but
exasperating hostilities of irregulars. The trouble from this source
was less during the winter of 1862-63 than it had been the year
before, but it still gave occupation to small movable columns of our
troops from time to time.
The organization of my staff was somewhat increased with the
enlargement of responsibilities. Lieutenant-Colonel McElroy, who had
been my adjutant-general in the campaign of 1861, returned to me as
inspector-general and took the whole supervision of the equipment,
drill, and instruction of the troops of the district. Major Bascom,
who had received his promotion at the same time with mine, continued
to be adjutant-general. The increased work in looking after supplies
made more force in the commissariat a necessity, and Captain
Barriger of the regular army was sent to me, my former commissary,
Captain Treat, continuing on the staff. Barriger was a modest,
clear-headed officer of admirable business qualifications, whom I
had the good fortune to be again associated with late in the war.
Three principal depots of supply were established at the bases of
the principal lines of communication in the district,--Wheeling,
Parkersburg, and Gallipolis. At each of these, depot commissaries
and quartermasters were located, and the posts and commands at the
front drew their supplies from them. Captain Fitch, my
quartermaster, supervised his department in a similar way to that of
the commissariat. My aides were Captain Christie and Lieutenant
Conine, as before, and I added to them my brother, Theodore Cox, who
served with me as volunteer aide without rank in the battles of
South Mountain and Antietam, and was then appointed lieutenant in
the Eleventh Ohio Infantry. He was my constant companion from this
time till peace was established. The medical department remained
under the care of Major Holmes, Brigade-Surgeon, who combined
scientific with administrative qualities in a rare measure.
There was no military movement during the winter of sufficient
importance to be told at length. Constant scouting and
reconnoissances were kept up, slight skirmishes were not infrequent,
but these did not prevent our sense of rest and of preparation for
the work of the next spring. General Crook, with a brigade, was
transferred temporarily to the command of Rosecrans in Tennessee,
and Kelley, Milroy, and Scammon divided the care of the three
hundred miles of mountain ranges which made our front. My own
leisure gave me the opportunity for some systematic and useful
reading in military history and art. An amusing interlude occurred
in a hot controversy which arose between General Milroy and one of
his subordinates which would not be worth mentioning except for the
fact that the subordinate had afterward a world-wide notoriety as
military chief of the Paris Commune in 1870.
Gustave Cluseret was a Frenchman, who was appointed in the spring of
1862 an aide-de-camp with the rank of colonel upon the staff of
General Frémont, who (with questionable legality) assigned him to
command a brigade, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. i. pp.
9, 35.] and recommended his appointment as brigadier for good
conduct in the May and June campaign against Jackson. The
appointment was made on October 14th, [Footnote: Army Register,
1863, p. 95.] and during the fall and winter he had a brigade in
Milroy's division. Milroy was, for a time, loud in his praises of
Cluseret as the _beau ideal_ of an officer, and their friendship was
fraternal. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxi. p. 779.] In the
winter, however, their mutual admiration was nipped by a killing
frost, and a controversy sprung up between them which soon led to
mutual recrimination also in the superlative degree. They addressed
their complaints to General Halleck, and as the papers passed
through my headquarters, I was a witness of their berating of each
other. They made a terrible din, on paper, for a while, but I cannot
recall anything very serious in their accusations. Halleck
pigeon-holed their correspondence, but Milroy had powerful political
friends, and Cluseret, learning that his appointment would not be
confirmed by the Senate, anticipated their action, and terminated
his military career in the United States by resigning two days
before the close of the session of Congress. [Footnote: Army
Register, 1863, p. 101. His name does not appear in the lists in the
body of the Register, because he was not in the Army April 1, 1863,
the date of publication.]
This brings me to the subject of Congressional action in the matter
of the promotions and appointments in the army during this winter
session which closed the Thirty-seventh Congress. By it I was myself
to suffer the one severe disappointment of my military career. The
time was one of great political excitement, for the fall elections
had resulted in a great overturning in the Congressional
delegations. The Democrats had elected so many representatives for
the Thirty-eighth Congress that it was doubtful whether the
administration would be able to command a majority in the House. The
retirement of McClellan from the command had also provoked much
opposition, and in the lack of full knowledge of the reasons for
displacing him, political ones were imagined and charged. Public
policy forbade the President to make known all his grounds of
dissatisfaction with the general, and many of his own party openly
questioned his wisdom and his capacity to govern. Men whose
patriotism cannot be questioned shared in this distrust, and in
their private writings took the most gloomy view of the situation
and of the future of the country. This was intensified when Burnside
was so bloodily repulsed at Fredericksburg at the close of the first
week of the session. [Footnote: Mr. W. P. Cutler, Representative
from Ohio, a modest but very intelligent and patriotic man, wrote in
his diary under December 16th: "This is a day of darkness and peril
to the country... Lincoln himself seems to have no nerve or decision
in dealing with great issues. We are at sea, and no pilot or
captain. God alone can take care of us, and all his ways _seem_ to
be against us and to favor the rebels and their allies the
Democrats. Truly it is a day of darkness and gloom." "Life and
Times" of Ephraim Cutler, with biographical sketches of Jervis
Cutler and W. P. Cutler, p.296.]
As is usual in revolutionary times, more radical measures were
supposed by many to be the cure for disasters, and in caucuses held
by congressmen the supposed conservatism of Mr. Lincoln and part of
his cabinet was openly denounced, and the earnestness of the army
leaders was questioned. [Footnote: Mr. Cutler reports a caucus of
the House held January 27th, in which "Mr. ---- stated that the great
difficulty was in holding the President to anything. He prided
himself on having a divided cabinet, so that he could play one
against the other... The earnest men are brought to a deadlock by
the President. The President is tripped up by his generals, who for
the most part seem to have no heart in their work." _Id_., p.301.
Mr. Cutler himself expresses similar sentiments and reiterates: "It
really seems as if the ship of state was going to pieces in the
storm." "How striking the want of a leader. The nation is without a
head." "The true friends of the government are groping around
without a leader," etc. _Id_., pp. 297, 301,302] Much of this was a
misunderstanding of the President and of events which time has
corrected, but at the moment and in the situation of the country it
was natural. It strongly affected the conduct of the federal
legislators, and must be taken into the account when we try to
understand their attitude toward the army and the administration of
military affairs.
In the Senate, at a very early day after the opening of the session,
Mr. Wilson, chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, offered a
resolution (which passed without opposition) calling upon the
Secretary of War for "the number and names of the major-generals and
brigadier-generals in the service of the United States, and where
and how they are employed." [Footnote: Senate Journal, 3d Session,
37th Congress, Dec. 8, 1862.] This was, no doubt, the offspring of
an opinion in vogue in Congress, that the President had gone beyond
the authority of law in the number of these officers he had
appointed. If this were true, the course taken was not a friendly
one toward the administration. The whole list of appointments and
promotions would be submitted to the Senate for confirmation, and if
the statutory number had been exceeded, that body could stop
confirming when it reached the legal limit. There were, of course,
frequent consultations between the Congressional committees or the
individual members and the Secretary of War; but whatever efforts
there may have been to reach a quiet understanding failed. On the
21st of January, the Secretary not having responded to Mr. Wilson's
resolution, Mr. Rice of Minnesota offered another (which also passed
by unanimous consent), directing the Secretary of War "to inform the
Senate whether any more major and brigadier generals have been
appointed and paid than authorized by law; and if so, how many; give
names, dates of appointment and amounts paid." [Footnote: _Id_.,
Jan. 21, 1863.]
Two days later the Secretary sent in his reports in response to both
resolutions. To the first he replied that the interests of the
public service would not permit him to state "where and how" the
general officers were employed, but he gave the list of names. He
gave also a separate list of six major-generals who were not
assigned to any duty. [Footnote: These were McClellan, Frémont,
Cassius M. Clay, Buell (ordered before a military commission),
McDowell, and F. J. Porter (both before military courts in
connection with the second battle of Bull Run).] To the second
resolution he replied that "It is believed by this Department that
the law authorizing the increase of the volunteer and militia forces
necessarily implied an increase of officers beyond the number
specified in the Act of July 17, 1862, to any extent required by the
service, and that the number of appointments is not beyond such
limit." If the limit of the statute named were strictly applied, he
said there would be found to be nine major-generals and forty-six
brigadier-generals in excess. There had been no payments of
increased salary to correspond with the increased rank, except in
one instance. [Footnote: Executive Documents of Senate, 3d Session,
37th Congress, Nos. 21 and 22. The nine major-generals were Schuyler
Hamilton, Granger, Cox, Rousseau, McPherson, Augur, Meade, Hartsuff,
and N. B. Buford. If the number were thirteen, it would include
Foster, Parke, Schenck, and Hurlbut.] The list submitted showed
fifty-two major-generals in service, and one (Buford) was omitted,
so that if forty should prove to be the limit, there would be
thirteen in excess. This, however, was only apparently true, for the
Secretary's list included the four major-generals in the regular
army, whose case was not covered by the limitation of the statute.
This seems to have been overlooked in the steps subsequently taken
by members of Congress, and as the action was unwelcome to the
President, he did not enlighten the legislators respecting their
miscalculation. The business proceeded upon the supposition that the
appointments in the highest rank were really thirteen in excess of
the number fixed by the statute.
The state of the law was this. The Act of July 22, 1861, authorized
the President to call for volunteers, not exceeding half a million,
and provided for one brigadier-general for four regiments and one
major-general for three brigades. The Act of 25th July of the same
year authorized a second call of the same number, and provided for
"such number of major-generals and brigadier-generals as may in his
(the President's) judgment be required for their organization." In
the next year, however, a "rider" was put upon the clause in the
appropriation bill to pay the officers and men of the volunteer
service, which provided "that the President shall not be authorized
to appoint more than forty major-generals, nor more than two hundred
brigadier-generals," and repealed former acts which allowed more.
[Footnote: The several acts referred to may be found in vol. xii. U.
S. Statutes at Large, pp. 268, 274, 506. The appropriation bill was
passed July 5, 1862. The date July 17, 1862, in the Secretary's
report seems to be a misprint.] This limit just covered those who
had been appointed up to the date of the approval of the
appropriation bill. Two questions, however, were still open for
dispute. First, whether a "rider" upon the appropriation should
change a general law on the subject of army organization, and
second, whether the new limit might not allow appointments to be
_thereafter_ made to the extent of the numbers stated. The report of
Mr. Stanton evidently suggests such questions.
The matter was now in good shape for what politicians call "a deal,"
and negotiations between members of Congress and the executive were
active. The result appears to have been an understanding that a bill
should be passed increasing the number of general officers, so as
not only to cover the appointments already made, but leaving a
considerable margin of new promotions to be filled by arrangement
between the high contracting parties. On the 12th of February, 1863,
the Senate passed a bill providing for the appointment of twenty
major-generals of volunteers and fifty brigadiers. This was not
acceptable to the House. The battle of Stone's River had lately been
fought in Tennessee, and representatives from the West were urgent
in arguing that affairs near Washington unduly filled the view of
the administration. There was some truth in this. At any rate the
House amended the bill so as to increase the numbers to forty
major-generals and one hundred brigadiers, to be made by promotions,
for meritorious service, from lower grades. As soon as it was known
that the Military Committee of the House would report such an
amendment, it was assumed that the Senate would concur, and a
"slate" was made up accordingly. On the hypothesis that the list of
major-generals was thirteen in excess of the forty fixed by statute,
a new list of twenty-seven was made out, which would complete the
forty to be added by the new bill. A similar list was prepared for
the brigadiers and precisely similar negotiations went on, but for
brevity's sake I shall confine myself to the list for the highest
rank, in which I was personally concerned.
The House passed the amended bill on the 27th of February, and it
went back to the Senate for concurrence in the amendments. But now
an unexpected difficulty arose. The Senate refused to concur in the
changes made by the House. It matters little whether the senators
were offended at the determination of the lower House to have so
large a share in the nominations, or desired to punish the President
for having gone beyond the letter of the law in his promotions of
1862; the fact was that they voted down the amendments. A committee
of conference between the two houses was appointed, and a compromise
report was made fixing the additional number of major-generals at
thirty and of brigadiers at seventy-five. Both Houses finally
concurred in the report, the bill went to the President on the 1st
of March, and he signed it on the next day.
There was but a single working-day of the session left, for the
session must end at noon of the 4th of March. The list must be
reduced. The manner in which this was done clinches the proof, if
there had been any doubt before, that the list of twenty-seven was
the result of negotiations with congressmen. No meddling with that
list was permitted, though the use of patronage as "spoils" had some
very glaring illustrations in it. The President had to make the
reduction from his own promotions made earlier, and which were
therefore higher on the list and in rank, instead of dropping those
last added, as had seemed to be demanded by the earlier action of
Congress. The only exception to this was in the case of General
Schofield, whose even-handed administration of the District of
Missouri and army of the frontier had excited the enmity of extreme
politicians in that State and in Kansas, led by Senator "Jim" Lane,
the prince of "jay-hawkers." Schofield was dropped from the
twenty-seven.
A few changes had occurred in the original roster of officers,
making additional vacancies. Governor Morgan of New York, who had a
complimentary appointment as major-general, but had never served,
resigned. Schuyler Hamilton also resigned, and Fitz-John Porter was
cashiered.
The number to be sacrificed was thus reduced to six, and the lot
fell on Generals N. B. Buford, G. W. Morell, W. F. Smith, H. G.
Wright, J. M. Schofield, and myself. The last four won their
promotion a second time and were re-appointed and confirmed at
varying intervals; but of that later. Of course, in such a scramble
it was only a question as to who had or had not powerful friends on
the spot who would voluntarily champion his cause. No one at a
distance could have any warning. The passage of the bill and action
under it came together. For myself, I had gone quietly on in the
performance of duty, never dreaming of danger, and it was long years
after the war before I learned how the thing had in fact been done.
My place had been near the top of the list, the commands which I had
exercised and the responsibilities intrusted to me had been greater
than those of the large majority of the appointees, and I had
conclusive evidence of the approval of my superiors. The news was at
first, therefore, both astonishing and disheartening. As a result of
political "influences," it is sufficiently intelligible. I had at
that time a barely speaking acquaintance with Senator Wade of Ohio.
It was the same with Senator Sherman, but with the added
disadvantage that in the senatorial contest of 1860 between him and
Governor Dennison I had warmly espoused the cause of the latter. Mr.
Hutchins, the representative from my district, had not been
renominated, and Garfield, who was elected in his place, had not yet
taken his seat, but was still in the military service in the field.
Mr. Chase had been a constant friend, but this was just the time
when his differences with Mr. Lincoln had become acute, and since
the 20th of December the President had in his hands the resignations
of both Seward and Chase, which enabled him to refuse both, and to
baffle the party in the Senate which was trying to force him to
reorganize his cabinet by excluding Seward and those who were
thought the more conservative. As he expressed it, "he had a pumpkin
in each end of his bag, and could now ride." [Footnote: Hay and
Nicolay's "Lincoln," vol. vi. p. 271.] If, on the theory of
apportioning the promotions to States, it were held that Ohio must
lose one of the six nominated, it was easy to see where the balance
of influence would be. General Halleck was well known to be
persistent in favoring appointments from the regular army, and would
urge that the reduction should be made from those originally
appointed from civil life. These were Schenck and myself. But
General Schenck was a veteran member of the House of Representatives
and had now been elected to the next house, in which it was known he
would be a prominent character. It goes without saying, therefore,
that on such a basis the black ball would come to me. [Footnote: The
promotions of Ohio officers then pending, besides my own, were of
Schenck, McCook, Rosecrans, Stanley, McPherson, and Sheridan.] To
complete the story of the promotions made at this time, it may be
added that a short executive session of the Senate was held after
the regular adjournment of Congress on the 4th of March, and that
the President sent in the names of Carl Schurz and Julius Stahel to
be made major-generals. For one of these a vacancy was made by the
arrangement that Cassius M. Clay was reappointed minister to St.
Petersburg and resigned the military rank which he had never used.
The other seems to have been made by a resignation to take effect
the next month. General Sumner died on the 21st of March, making
another vacancy, but it is difficult to fix with accuracy the exact
date of the changes which occurred. [Footnote: The reason for this
difficulty is in part found in the frequent assignment of rank to
officers from an earlier date than their appointment, and as the
official lists are arranged according to rank, they are sometimes
misleading as to date of appointment. Thus Rosecrans dates in the
register from March 21, 1862, but he was not appointed till some six
months later. So also Schofield when reappointed in May, 1863, was
made to rank as in his first appointment, from Nov. 29, 1862.] In
the case of the last two promotions Mr. Lincoln openly declared that
he made them in recognition of the German element in the army and in
politics. [Footnote: For an illustration of Mr. Lincoln's way of
putting things in such cases, see "Military Miscellany" by Colonel
James B. Fry, p. 281.]
It would be unjust to assume that members of Congress and the
President were not guided by patriotic motives. The reform of the
public service in matters of appointment had not then attracted much
attention. Patronage was used for political purposes with complete
frankness and openness. In civil offices this custom was boldly
defended and advocated. There was some consciousness shown that
promotions in the army ought to be controlled by a somewhat
different rule, but it seemed to be thought that enough was done in
the way of safeguard when the choice was confined to officers
already in service, and appointments for the highest grades were not
given to entirely new men from civil life. Each aspirant could find
friends to sound his praises, and it was easy to assert that it was
only giving preference to one's friends among officers of equal
merit. Many excellent appointments were in fact made, and the
proportion of these would have been greater if the judgment of
military superiors had been more controlling in determining the
whole list. Mr. Lincoln's humorous way of explaining his actions may
give an impression of a lower standard than he actually
acknowledged; but it cannot be denied that he allowed himself to be
pressed into making military promotions, at times, upon purely
political or personal reasons. [Footnote: Colonel Fry, who was
assistant adjutant-general at Washington and in personal intercourse
with the President, gives the following as a memorandum made by Mr.
Lincoln himself in reference to an application to have a
regular-army officer made a brigadier-general of volunteers. "On
this day Mrs. ----- called upon me: she is the wife of Major -----
of the regular army. She is a saucy little woman, and I think she
will torment me till I have to do it." Colonel Fry adds, "It was not
long till that little woman's husband was appointed a
brigadier-general." Miscellany, pp. 280, 281.]
It did not seem to occur to the authorities that the judgment of
superior officers in the field should be called for and carefully
considered when it was a question of promoting one of their
subordinates. An instance which occurred in General Buell's army
carried this beyond the verge of the grotesque. Colonel Turchin, of
an Illinois regiment, was a Russian, an educated officer who had
served in the Russian staff corps. An excellent soldier in many
respects, his ideas of discipline were, unfortunately, lax, and in
the summer of 1862 he was courtmartialled for allowing his men to
pillage a town in Tennessee. The court was an intelligent one, of
which General Garfield was president. The story current in the army
at the time, and which I believe to be true, is that after the court
had heard part of the testimony it became apparent that they must
convict, and Mrs. Turchin, who usually accompanied her husband in
the field, started to the rear to procure political "influences" to
save him. With various recommendations she went to Washington, and
was so successful that although the sentence of the court dismissing
him from the service was promulgated on the 6th of August, he had
been appointed a brigadier-general of volunteers on the 5th, and he
was not one of those who were dropped from the list on March 3,
1863. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xvi. pt. ii. p. 277.] The
trial was one of considerable notoriety, yet it is probable that it
was overlooked by the President and Secretary of War at the time the
appointment was made; but it cannot need to be said that whatever
grounds for leniency might have existed, it turns the whole business
into a farce when they were made the basis of a promotion in the
revised list six months later. To add to the perfection of the
story, Mrs. Turchin had acted on her own responsibility, and the
colonel did not know of the result till he had gone home, and in an
assembly of personal friends who called upon him ostensibly to cheer
him in his doleful despondency, his wife brought the little drama to
its _dénouement_ by presenting him with the appointment in their
presence.
One of the worst features of the method of appointment by "slate"
made up between congressmen and the executive was that it filled up
every place allowed by law, and left nothing to be used as a
recognition for future services in the field, except as vacancies
occurred, and these were few and far between. The political
influences which determined the appointment were usually powerful
enough to prevent dismissal. Whoever will trace the employment of
officers of the highest grades in the last half of the war, will
find large numbers of these on unimportant and nominal duty, whilst
their work in the active armies was done by men of lower grade, to
whom the appropriate rank had to be refused. The system was about as
bad as could be, but victory was won in spite of it. It was
fortunate, on the whole, that we did not have the grades of
lieutenant-general and general during the war, as the Confederates
had. They made the one the regular rank of a corps commander and the
other of the commander of an army in the field. With us the
assignment of a major-general by the President to command a corps
gave him a temporary precedence over other major-generals not so
assigned, and in like manner for the commander of an army.
[Footnote: Our system was essentially that of the first French
Republic and the Consulate, under which any general of division was
assignable to an army command in chief.] If these were relieved,
they lost the precedence, and thus there was a sort of temporary
rank created, giving a flexibility to the grade of major-general,
without which we should have been greatly embarrassed. Grant's rank
of lieutenant-general was an exceptional grade, made for him alone,
when, after the battle of Missionary Ridge, he was assigned to the
command of all the armies.
These opinions of mine are not judgments formed after the fact. The
weak points in our army organization were felt at the time, and I
took every means in my power to bring them to the attention of the
proper authorities, State and National. At the close of 1862 a
commission was appointed by the Secretary of War to revise the
articles of war and army regulations. Of this commission
Major-General Hitchcock was chairman. They issued a circular calling
for suggestions as to alterations supposed to be desirable, and a
copy was sent to me among others. I took occasion to report the
results of my own experience, and to trace the evils which existed
to their sources in our military system. I called attention to the
striking parallel between our practices and those that had been in
use in the first French Republic, and to the identical mischiefs
which had resulted. Laxity of discipline, straggling, desertion,
demagoguery in place of military spirit, giving commissions as the
reward of mere recruiting, making new regiments instead of filling
up the old ones, absence of proper staff corps,--every one of these
things had been suffered in France till they could no longer be
endured, and we had faithfully copied their errors without profiting
by the lesson.
In the freedom of private correspondence with Mr. Chase I enlarged
upon the same topics, and urged him to get the serious attention of
the President and the cabinet to them. I gave him examples of the
mischiefs that were done by the insane efforts to raise new
regiments by volunteering when we ought to apply a conscription as
the only fair way of levying a tax on the physical strength of the
nation. I said: "I have known a lieutenant to be forced by his
captain (a splendid soldier) to resign on account of his general
inefficiency. I have seen that same lieutenant take the field a few
months later as lieutenant-colonel of a new regiment, whilst the
captain still stood at the head of his fraction of a company in the
line. This is not a singular instance, but an example of cases
occurring literally by the thousand in our vast army during the year
past.... Governor Tod (of Ohio) said to me some time ago, with the
deepest sorrow, that he was well aware that in raising the new
regiments by volunteering, the distribution of offices to the
successful recruiters was filling the army with incompetent men whom
we should have to sift out again by such process as we could!....
Have we time for the sifting process? Even if we had, how
inefficient the process itself when these officers have their
commissions in their pockets, and cannot be brought before a court
or a military commission till much of the mischief they can do is
accomplished, bad habits amongst the soldiers formed, and the work
of training them made infinitely more difficult than with absolutely
raw recruits. It was in view of such probable results that I
expressed the hope that no more new regiments would be raised by
volunteering, when, in July last, the levy of an additional force
was mooted. It seemed to me that the President could well say to the
world, 'Our people have shown abundant proof of their enthusiasm in
support of the government by volunteering already to the number of
more than half a million, a thing unprecedented in the world's
history: we now, as a matter of military expediency, call for a
draft to fill up the broken battalions.'" [Footnote: From private
letter of Jan. 1, 1863.]
I urged with equal frankness the need of giving unity to the army by
abolishing the distinction between regulars and volunteers, and by a
complete reorganization of the staff. I said it seemed absurd that
with nearly a million of men in the field, the Register of the Army
of the United States should show an organization of some twenty
regiments only, of which scarce a dozen had been in active service.
"If a volunteer organization is fit to decide the _great_ wars of
the nation, is it not ridiculous to keep an expensive organization
of regulars for the petty contests with Indians or for an ornamental
appendage to the State in peace?" The thing to be aimed at seemed to
me to be to have a system flexible enough to provide for the
increase of the army to any size required, without losing any of the
advantage of character or efficiency which, in any respect,
pertained to it as a regular army. Circumstances to which I have
already alluded, probably prevented Mr. Chase from taking any active
part again in the discussion of army affairs in the cabinet.
Probably many of the same ideas were urged upon the President from
other quarters, for there was much agitation of the subject in the
army and out of it. But nothing came of it, for even the draft, when
it became the law, was used more as a shameful whip to stimulate
volunteering than as an honorable and right way to fill the ranks of
the noble veteran regiments. General Sherman found, in 1864, the
same wrong system thwarting his efforts to make his army what it
should be, and broke out upon it in glorious exasperation.
[Footnote: Letter to Halleck, Sept. 4, 1864. "To-morrow is the day
for the draft, and I feel more interested in it than in any event
that ever transpired. I do think it has been wrong to keep our old
troops so constantly under fire. Some of these old regiments that we
had at Shiloh and Corinth have been with me ever since, and some of
them have lost seventy per cent in battle. It looks hard to put
these brigades, now numbering less than 800 men, into battle. They
feel discouraged, whereas, if we could have a steady influx of
recruits, the living would soon forget the dead. The wounded and
sick are lost to us, for once at a hospital, they become worthless.
It has been a very bad economy to kill off our best men and pay full
wages and bounties to the drift and substitutes." Official Records,
vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 793.]