prejudices of the few Americans who claim to control officially,
politically, and socially the destiny of the island will not permit
them to allow their children to attend the very efficient public
schools. This creates classes as in England and other autocratic
nations. By separation of growing citizens, division of the people
against their so-called American rulers will soon result. People of
alien nationalities, estranged from their rulers, will hardly help
maintain our government. Although I have never seen our other insular
possessions, I fear the same danger and embarrassment regarding the
perpetuity of the republic exists there also.
Hawaii has a most interesting museum presided over by Professor
William T. Brigham, of Boston, a man of about my age, who has spent
most of his life on the island. He told us much of interest about the
climate, animals, flowers, shrubbery and forests. On the Boundary
Commission I learned to determine the age of trees by their girdles of
growth, caused by the frost driving the sap down during the winter.
I asked Professor Brigham whether in a tropical torrid climate where
there was no return of sap to the earth these girdles existed. He
showed me a cut from a large tree with its cross section polished,
showing no sign of girdles. The growth is constant and solid.
On returning to the States we spent some time with our old friends in
El Paso. In recognition of the part we had played in the development
of the city, the city council changed the name of St. Louis Street, in
front of our building, to Mills Street, a monument to our name which
will outlast the building.
CONCLUSION
Our last visit to El Paso was on March 3, 1917, when Nannie, Constance
and I went there to meet Captain Overton, who had been in San
Francisco on business. We stayed for a few days with our good friends,
Mr. and Mrs. H. B. Stevens. While in El Paso I had ptomaine poisoning,
and was in great pain and very miserable for most of the visit.
Nannie was greatly distressed, and worried about me both there and
on the journey home. I completely recovered, but only seventeen days
after reaching Washington Nannie was taken suddenly ill with angina
pectoris, and, after a month's suffering, died on May 14, 1917.
Until this last illness she had always been well and very active,
taking great interest in her home and spending much time and thought
on doing good to her many relatives and friends. She had no inordinate
love of life, but often expressed the fear that she might outlive her
health and strength and become a care to others. Among her last words
to me were, "Anson, I wanted to live four or five years more, as there
are some things I hoped to do."
THE END
"How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on."
APPENDIX
The Organization and Administration of the United States Army
Address before the Society of the Army of the Cumberland
Address before the Order of Indian Wars, on "The Battle of the
Rosebud"
THE ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY
JANUARY 22, 1897
A partial course at the Military Academy, four years' experience as
a citizen of Texas--there in contact with the Army during its sorest
trials--and a service of thirty-six years as a commissioned officer
both in the Cavalry and Infantry (in the field without leave or
sickness during the War) and at twenty-five separate and independent
posts during the subsequent years, with a fair share in Indian
campaigns of this latter period, has convinced me--against my will and
inclination--that the Army is not now and never has been organized or
administered in its own interests, the interests of the people, nor in
harmony with the other institutions (national, state, or corporate) of
the Republic.
These pages are written with a view of making as full and free
criticism and exposition of the faults and errors as they have
occurred to me, and the remedies as they have suggested themselves,
as is proper for me to do under paragraph 5 of the Army Regulations,
with the full knowledge that the rôle of the innovator or reformer is
generally obnoxious to mankind, so given to the worship of ancestral
methods in all the affairs of life, but more markedly, perhaps, in
the profession of arms, the very mission of which is to maintain the
order of things as they exist, so that at present I can hardly hope to
have the support of perhaps even a majority of my brother officers,
for the reason that they are supposed (erroneously, I think) to be the
beneficiaries of the system and methods here assailed.
With this prelude and the faithful promise to "Nothing extenuate
nor set down aught in malice," I will proceed with my theme without
apology.
A careful study of the history of our country will show that neither
the great patriots and statesmen who founded and secured our
liberties, nor those who have followed and maintained them, have ever
at any time seriously considered the subject of _a permanent military
establishment_, save to declare in the Constitution "_That Congress
shall have power * * * to raise and support armies_," and that "_a
well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State_,"
and providing at various and sundry times to this date by legislative
enactments for the enrollment of "_every male citizen between the
ages of eighteen and forty-five_" as the well regulated militia, and
that each citizen so enrolled "_shall within six months thereafter
provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet
and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box
therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to
the bore of the musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain the
proper quantity of powder and ball; or, with a good rifle, knapsack,
shot pouch and powder horn, twenty balls, suited to the bore of his
rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear, so armed
and accoutred, and provided, when called out into exercise, or into
service; * * * that commissioned officers shall, severally, be armed
with a sword or hanger,[1] and a spontoon; and that from and after
five years from the passage of this act, all muskets for arming the
militia, as herein required, shall be of bores sufficient for balls of
the eighteenth part of a pound_," and "_for making farther and more
effectual provisions for the protection of the frontiers of the United
States_."
[1] See Cullem's "Art of War," page 26, describing the "Frank" soldier
of the Sixth Century.
In carrying out these projects they adopted for the government of the
troops so authorized, with very little alteration, the Articles of
War, Regulations, Pay and Allowances, and Systems of Organization,
with the Laws, written and unwritten, then in force in Great Britain;
and in the main the military establishment of the United States for
both Regulars and Militia so remains to the present day.
Jefferson and his contemporaries had busied themselves assiduously
before, during, and after the Revolution, in erasing from the statute
books of the Colonies and the Congress, all vestige or semblance of
support of a personal and despotic government, such as titles of
nobility, established church, primogeniture and the entailment of
estates, all of which had played so great a part in upholding cruel
and despotic governments of the great nations of civilization, to the
end that freeing the people from the all-powerful influence of these
ruling classes, they might establish a free and permanent government,
where all just powers should be derived "_from the consent of the
governed_"; so that by the time of the adoption of the Constitution in
1789 they had not only destroyed all these privileged classes, but had
established a government so unique in all its leading characteristics
that it differed in every feature save one, _the War Department_, from
any great nation known to history; complicated, yet symmetrical; its
executive, legislative, and judicial powers blending--both Federal and
State--in harmonious whole.
From its Supreme Court at the Nation's Capital down through its
inferior auxiliaries in the districts of all the States and
Territories, and in each State and Territory on down through their
Supreme Courts with their auxiliaries, and still on down through the
county, corporate and justices' courts in the counties and cities,
there is no cause of action, civil or criminal, possessed by any
party--individual or corporate--but there is a well-defined and easily
accessible remedy in original, appellate, and final jurisdiction; so
simple that the young lawyer just entering upon practice can, without
hesitation, file his complaint in the proper direction; when once
filed, though it may proceed to that of last resort--the Federal
Supreme Court--there is no confusion or conflict between the judges,
marshals, sheriffs, or constables, county, State, or Federal. But
when these legal authorities have exhausted their power to suppress
the lawless and make their call upon the executive of the nation to
protect the lives and property of the law-abiding (their dearest
and most sacred rights), neither the President nor the Governor,
the Marshal nor the Sheriff, the officer commanding the Federal
troops nor the officer commanding the State troops have any rules of
law for their mutual and common guidance and government; too often
local passion and political prejudice blind a just conception in
otherwise good men and endanger the public safety. The Army (and its
supplement--the Navy) being the only unimproved inheritance left us
from Great Britain.
This Organization and Administration for the British Army was
developed during the four of five centuries preceding our Revolution,
for the purpose of maintaining the alleged God-given right of
dynasties to rule the people without "The consent of the governed," to
support large royal families, a large line of nobility with attendant
trains, entailed estates, a numerous line of army officers--the latter
supplanting the knights errant--who together constituted the ruling
classes, distinguished from tradespeople and toilers as were the
patricians of Rome from plebeians.
Earlier the armies were raised by the knights and barons; the
officers from sons of the nobility who were admitted to the pomp and
circumstance of regal courts; the men from the lowest class (often
foreign mercenaries) hardly any of whom could read, or had any
conception of individual, much less political rights, just emerging
from barbarism and trained for wars where plunder was the main
incentive to courage in battle.
These were men to be governed by fear alone, and not by the love of
order and personal interest in its maintenance as Americans now govern
themselves. With such people, rigid personal government and rules of
discipline were necessary and accepted; with Americans, they are not
only unnecessary, but abhorrent.
To comport, then, with the surroundings in the ruling classes and
with the necessity for discipline among men so base in mercenary wars
for the benefit of the ruling classes alone, the Organization and
Administration were made to consist of two classes--officers and
men--as widely separated as master and slave; the officer became by
laws, written and unwritten, despotic and supercilious, with power
even to take life without responsibility; the man servile and blindly
obedient in the most abject sense, without remedies against his cruel
wrongs.
It is true that at the time of our Revolution popular liberty had
greatly advanced in England, but as the pay of the men was very small
and the most of the service required in distant colonies, many of
which were barbarous, and few equally advanced with England in civil
liberties, few but the idle and vicious could be induced to surrender
the rights then dawning upon them at home, and separate themselves
for years from civilization, friends, and kindred; so, of necessity
still, the unwritten laws were maintained, and those written did
not keep abreast with those pertaining to civil liberties at home.
To the officer, though a stripling, the soldier, though aged and
battle-scarred, was always "My man," and he, in servile response,
considered it a privilege if not an honor to black his master's boots.
He was made to spend much time in acquiring a knowledge of the proper
dress, manner, and deportment necessary to approach the presence
of any one holding a commission. All this we inherited--much is
unnecessarily perpetuated.
Until recently a similar unfortunate condition has confronted our
army since its organization, in the fact that nine-tenths of it
was compelled to abandon civilized association, going to the wilds
to war with the North American savage, more dreadful than any with
which the British Army has had to contend; only the poorest material
could be induced to enlist, and the officers had at least a partial
justification in maintaining the written and unwritten laws inherited
from the British Army. But the cessation of these wars--now never to
be resumed--and the transfer of the greater part of the army to the
East, near the great cities, bringing both men and officers in contact
with the people of the greatest civilization and also in direct
association with the National Guards of States, who are directly
from and with the people, has, within the last ten years, induced a
great change in material of the enlisted men, so that now there can
be no just reason why they should not be placed on a level as to pay,
government, and promotion with other public employees in similar
service, such as letter-carriers, city policemen, and others.
Right here it should be said, however, that the faults do not lie
with the officers; as a rule they are blameless in these matters, as
it is their sworn duty to maintain the unwritten laws, the customs of
the service as they find them--which they have done, often knowing
themselves to be the sufferers in alienation from the sympathies
of the volunteers and the people in our greater wars--and at times
impairing their usefulness for larger commands, by prejudices thus
engendered. The material in officers is as good as any in the world,
but there is little incentive to ambitious effort. The too certain
tenure of office and the legal right to promotion by seniority are
destructive of individuality and self-reliance (the distinctive
characteristics of the American people) and subversive of ambitious
efforts in time of peace, and in another decade the Army will
degenerate into that state of imbecility and helplessness in which the
great emergency of the Rebellion of 1861 found it. Neither is it the
fault of the enlisted men.
Nothing, however, in our Republic, is so un-American as the great
gulf that is maintained by laws, written and unwritten, between the
commissioned and non-commissioned; a similar unfortunate gulf has
also heretofore separated the Regular Peace Establishment from the
Militia. Neither was intended by the Constitution nor its framers. The
fault lies with the legislators, who should have perceived that our
Government, founded on principles the reverse of those cited above,
without classes, save as graded by worth, required an essentially
different organization and administration, and they should have
provided it, but they did not and have not to this day. They have
practically kept up a small Army, generally qualified, however, by
declaring the purposes temporary, but never seriously attempting a
remodeling of its organization and administration, as was done in all
other branches of the Government. They had suffered so much from the
British soldier in Colonial times and had been able to vanquish him
in battle with their citizen soldiery on such memorable occasions
as "Saratoga" and "Yorktown" that they had contempt and hatred for
anything in his semblance, and afterwards probably feared a permanent
organization as menacing to the liberties they had wrested with such
great sacrifice from its like, and repudiated it in spirit.
There are, however, two other alleged reasons which may have had a
leading part in preventing politicians and statesmen from entering
upon the necessary legislation. The first is the hazard or imagined
peril to the safety of the Republic from "The Man on Horseback," a
military leader placed officially at the head of a large body of well
organized troops. This might be briefly answered with the truthful
statement that at least two such men--Washington and Grant, and
perhaps a third, Jackson--have had it clearly within their power to
become dictators, and that the Republic as long as it survives will
always regard them as the very safest of the many custodians of its
liberties, while other leaders in the forum have attempted in vain
their destruction.
The second is the great and lapsing question of "State's Rights,"
which at first had much force and reason, but is now fast losing
all possibility of maintenance, and must eventually give way to the
changed conditions and the much greater mutual interests of the States
involved.
This doctrine had much right and reason in the earlier days of the
Republic, because the States then, by reason of the comparative
non-migration of their citizens and the transportation of products and
commodities from one to the other, and the distinct characteristics
of their people in habits and customs of business, might almost be
said to differ from each other as did the baronies of Scotland in
the Middle Ages, and required almost as autonomous laws for their
government. But gradually their wonderfully increased population,
the unparalleled advances in steam transportation, the great
multiplication of their products and commodities (in one part or
another of the Republic almost everything useful being produced) have
so stimulated travel and commerce that they have so far lost their
original individuality, that the individual citizen of each State
in his daily wants and affairs, is quite as much interested in the
laws, customs and business of other States, as in those of his own.
Judging by the past, within the next half century the Republic will
contain over 200,000,000 people and scores of cities of over a million
inhabitants; greater and broader-tracked railroads with easier grades
and curves and swifter speed, interchanging swiftly and cheaply the
commodities of Florida with Alaska, and California with Maine; great
ocean ship-canals with single locks connecting the Great Lakes with
the ocean via the Hudson and Mississippi rivers.
The humblest citizen of the Republic will then have a daily interest
in the protection of these great properties and the lives of the men
who maintain them in operation, which can only be accomplished by
a strong, united and well-sustained Federal force supported by the
States.
The Regular Army is now smaller in proportion to the population
and wealth of the nation than it has ever been at any period since
the organization of the Government; the number of the lawless, the
facility for their organization, armament and concentration has on the
other hand largely increased, with greater power to do harm by reason
of the newly invented destructive and terrible explosives.
An organization and administration after the skeleton plan which is
briefly outlined below would modify much that is evil and bring the
military in harmony with the other democratic institutions of the
Republic:
PROJECT FOR A PERMANENT MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT FOR THE UNITED
STATES
1. That the permanent Line of the Regular Army shall consist of
one company for each district represented in the lower House
of Congress, and one company for each Senator in the upper
House, to be organized into regiments and corps as nearly as
practicable as now authorized by law. Companies may be expanded
to double their strength in time of war, at the discretion of
the President.
2. That the permanent Line of the Militia of the United States
(in the several States) shall consist of one regiment for each
district represented in the lower House of Congress, and one
regiment for each Senator in the upper House, a company of the
Regular Army, when requested of the President by the Governor of
the State, to be one of the companies of the Militia regiment,
the captain its lieutenant colonel, the second lieutenant
its adjutant, and the first sergeant its sergeant major; the
regiment to be otherwise organized, armed and equipped as the
Regular regiment to which the Regular company belongs. In the
assignment of the Regular companies to these Militia regiments,
to avoid sectional prejudices as far as practicable, but one
company of any regiment shall be assigned to any one State.
3. That whenever there may be money appropriated for that
purpose by Congress, the President may, at the request
of the Governor, order the Regular company to join its
Militia regiment, and report to the Governor, for mutual
familiarization, instruction, and discipline, under his command
for a period not exceeding two months annually.
4. That upon application by the Governor, the President may
order the Regular company to join its Militia regiment, for the
suppression of riots and insurrections within his State, under
his command, and the President may upon proper application call
the Militia regiment "into the actual service of the United
States," with or without its Regular company, to "execute the
Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrection, or repel Invasion"
within or without the State to which it belongs.
5. That on request of the Governor, on the recommendation of
a board of officers of the Militia regiment, the President
may order a lieutenant of the Militia regiment to duty with
its Regular company, for a period not exceeding two years, to
receive, after taking the oath, the rank, pay and allowances
of his grade in the Army, during his service for that period;
_Provided_, That but one officer in the regiment is so assigned,
at the same time, and that while so assigned, one of the
lieutenants of the Regular company may, on the application of
the Governor, be assigned to duty with its Militia regiment, by
the President.
6. That it shall hereafter be the duty of Regular officers
detailed to inspect Militia regiments to report the four
officers in each regiment who are, in their judgment, best
qualified for court-martial duty, and thereafter they may
be detailed on courts for the trial of Regular officers; no
court, however, to have over twenty per cent of its members of
such Militia officers so recommended; the Militia officers so
detailed to have the rank, pay, and emoluments of their grade in
the Army while serving on such detail.
7. That it shall hereafter be the duty of colonels of regiments
of the Regular Army to report annually six of the sergeants of
their respective regiments in their judgment best qualified
for service on courts martial, and that thereafter they may be
detailed on courts martial convened for the trial of enlisted
men of the Regular Army; no court, however, to have over twenty
per cent of its members of such sergeants so recommended.
8. That hereafter the finding and sentence of courts martial
shall be publicly announced, in open court, to the accused,
immediately after its determination.
9. That it be the duty hereafter of the committees on Military
Affairs in both the Senate and House of Representatives, to send
a sub-committee, the Chairman of the Senate sub-committee to
have, during this duty, the temporary rank of Major General, and
that of the House Brigadier General, and each sub-committee to
have an officer of the Inspector General's Department for its
Recorder, to visit and inspect, as far as practicable during
the recess of each session of Congress, the principal points of
interest, both in the Regular Army and the Militia, and submit
their reports with recommendations--the Senate Committee through
the Senate to the President for his information, and the House
Committee to the Speaker for the information of the House.