From the Easy Chair, Volume 3

by George William Curtis

REVIEW OF UNION TROOPS
1865

HE victorious armies had marched home and into history. The two days of review at the end of May was a spectacle not likely to be forgotten by those who saw it or did not see it. It belonged to that series of events for which there is no precedence, because there never was before a continental republic. Like every remarkable occurrence in these remarkable days of ours, the disbanding of the armies of the East and West, and their quiet absorption into the mass of the people, is a spectacle which has another illustration to the extreme practicability of a popular government. Usually the return of the victorious army is dreaded by its country somewhat as its advance is by the enemy, and government provides other wars to employ it. But our men are citizens who have been defending their own rights. It is their own government they have been maintaining. The endeavor to represent the government as a power different from the people and dangerous to their liberty has failed several times during the war, and will always fail so long as the broadest base of the government is jealously guarded. And nothing is more honorable to human nature, nothing so truly vindicates the wisdom of our institutions and the faith that supports them, than that during the Civil War, of which the event seemed sometimes doubtful, there has not been even the suspicion of a desire upon the part of any popular general to seize power and dictate to the authorities. Indeed, in the only instance in which such a whisper was breathed the suggestion was known to come from the politicians who surrounded the general, and not from himself.

The review was, according to all reports, a noble sight. The Army of the Potomac, which, often baffled, at last struck the crowning blow of the war, and the Army of the West, whose history is immortal, poured through the capital amid the shouts and exultation of thousands of spectators, and marched, with the inspiring clash and peal of martial music, before the President, the Lieutenant-General, and the notable civilians all the day. The Western Army had with them the spoils of war: large red roosters and fighting-cocks, tied on to the backs of mules; cows, donkeys, and goats came also. The army moved as though Washington were but a village upon the road of its march through Georgia or the Carolinas. The critical spectators thought they observed the Western men were of a finer physique and more entirely American, and the Eastern of a stricter military drill. The slouched hat was worn by the officers and men of the West, the French kepi by the more showy Eastern officers. Sherman himself, the hero of the magnificent campaign which the Richmond papers said was merely the flight of an arrow through the air—but which literally pierced the rebellion to the heart—was saluted by the grandest acclamations. History will rank him with the really great soldiers. His men are very proud of him—how could they help it?—and if for a moment there was wonder at his arrangements with Johnson, there is no man now so poor as to doubt his sincerity or question his patriotism.

It would have been pleasant if, with the other heroes, the eager, proud crowd could have seen General Thomas, the soldier who, by indomitable tenacity, saved the day at Chickamauga and destroyed the rebel army before Nashville; but he was on duty elsewhere.

As the armies passed it must have been impossible to forget—as in reading of the spectacle we constantly remember—the disbanding of the army of the Revolution. The soldiers at the review are only a part of the men now in arms, yet they were about two hundred thousand. Since the war began there have been many more than a million in the armies. During the Revolution (as we learn from Professor G. W. Greene's very interesting volume on the Revolution), there were altogether in the service 239,791 regulars in the Continental army and 56,163 of the militia, and the sufferings of that early army are not to be described. "During the first winter soldiers thought it hard that they should have nothing to cook their food with; but they found, before the close, that it was harder still to have nothing to cook." Few Americans have ever known what it was to suffer for want of clothing; but thousands, as the war went on, saw their garments falling by piecemeal from around them, till scarce a shred remained to cover their nakedness. They made long marches without shoes, staining the frozen ground with the blood from their feet. They fought battles with guns which were hardly safe to bear half a charge of powder. They fought, or marched, or worked at the intrenchments all day, and laid them down at night with but one blanket to three men.

Mr. Greene tells us that the condition of the officers was hardly better than that of the men. They, too, had suffered cold and hunger; they, too, had been compelled to do duty without sufficient clothing, to march and watch and fight without sufficient food. We are told of a dinner where no officer was admitted who had a whole pair of pantaloons, and of all who were invited there was not one who did not establish his claims for admission.

The treatment of the army of the Revolution by the Continental Congress was unworthy the fame of that body which Lord Chatham so loftily praised to Dr. Franklin. The army was disbanded stealthily, "as if the nation were afraid to look their deliverers in the face; all through the summer of 1783 furloughs were granted freely, and the ranks gradually thinned. Then on the 18th of October a final proclamation was issued for their discharge. On the 2d of November Washington issued his final orders from Rocky Hill, near Princeton. On the 3d they were disbanded. There was no formal leave-taking. Each regiment, each company, went when it chose. Men who had stood side by side in battle, who had shared the same tent in summer, the same hut in winter, parted, never to meet again. Some still had homes, and, therefore, definite hopes. But hundreds knew not whither to go.... For a few days taverns and streets were crowded. For weeks soldiers were to be seen on every road, or lingering bewildered about public places, like men who were at a loss to know what to do with themselves. There were no ovations for them as they came back, toilworn before their time, to the places that had once known them; no ringing of bells; no eager opening of hospitable doors. The country was tired of the war, tired of the sound of the drum and fife; anxious to get back to sowing and reaping, to buying and selling, and town meetings, and general elections."

These were the veterans of one of the most glorious and important wars in the progress of the race. Yet the men who were so unhandsomely suffered to depart from the service were also grudgingly paid when they were released. "Their claims were disputed inch by inch. Money which should have been given cheerfully as a righteous debt was doled out with a reluctant hand as a degrading charity."

It is refreshing to turn from the page of this melancholy historian to the newspaper of to-day, and read that the men who have received the jubilant ovation of the review are not only to be paid in full and at once, as the most sacred of national debts, but that the most strenuous effort will be made to employ them by preference in the public offices to which they may be fitted, while private persons will bear in mind the same just and generous purpose. Indeed, there is no forgetfulness of the soldiers of to-day. The sense of their vital service to the country is universal and commanding. They will be honored heroes while they live, and our children shall be proud that we cherish them.