Washington the Soldier

by Henry B. Carrington

PREFACE.

The text of this volume, completed in the spring of 1898 and not since modified, requires a different Preface from that first prepared. The events of another war introduce applications of military principles which have special interest. This is the more significant because modern appliances have been developed with startling rapidity, while general legislation and the organization of troops, both regular and volunteer, have been very similar to those of the times of Washington, and of later American wars.

His letters, his orders, his trials, his experiences; the diversities of judgment between civilians and military men; between military men of natural aptitudes and those of merely professional or accidental training, as well as the diversities of personal and local interest, indicate the value of Washington’s example and the character of his time. Hardly a single experience in his career has not been realized by officers and men in these latter days.

A very decided impression, however, has obtained among educated men, including those of the military profession, that Washington had neither the troops, resources, and knowledge, nor the broad range of field service which have characterized modern warfare, and therefore lacked material elements which develop the typical soldier. But more recent military operations upon an extensive scale, especially those of the Franco-Prussian War, and the American Civil War of 1861–1865, have supplied material for better appreciation of the principles that were involved in the campaigns of the War for American Independence, as compared with those of Napoleon, Wellington, Marlborough, Frederick, Hannibal, and Cæsar.

With full allowance for changes in army and battle formation, tactical action and armament, as well as greater facilities for the transportation of troops and army supplies, it remains true that the relative effect of all these changes upon success in war upon a grand scale, has not been the modification of those principles of military science which have shaped battle action and the general conduct of war, from the earliest period of authentic military history. The formal “Maxims of Napoleon” were largely derived from his careful study of the campaigns of Frederick, Hannibal, and Cæsar; and these, with the principles involved, had specific and sometimes literal illustration in the eventful operations of the armies of the Hebrew Commonwealth. As a matter of fact, those early Hebrew experiences were nearly as potential in shaping the methods of modern generals, as their civil code became the formative factor in all later civil codes, preëminently those of the English Common Law. The very best civil, police, and criminal regulations of modern enactment hold closely to Hebrew antecedents. And in military lines, the organization of regiments by companies, and the combinations of regiments as brigades, divisions and corps, still rest largely upon the same decimal basis; and neither the Roman legion nor the Grecian phalanx improved upon that basis. Even the Hebrew militia, or reserves, had such well-established comprehension of the contingency of the entire nation being called to the field, or subjected to draft, that as late as the advent of Christ, when he ordered the multitudes to be seated upon the grass for refreshment, “they seated themselves in companies of hundreds and fifties.” The sanitary and police regulations of their camps have never been surpassed, nor their provision for the cleanliness, health, and comfort of the rank and file. From earliest childhood they were instructed in their national history and its glorious achievements, and the whole people rejoiced in the gallant conduct of any.

Changes in arms, and especially in projectiles, only induced modified tactical formation and corresponding movements. The division of armies into a right, centre, and left, with a well-armed and well-trained reserve, was illustrated in their earliest battle record. The latest modern formation, which makes of the regiment, by its three battalion formation, a miniature brigade, is chiefly designed to give greater individual value to the soldier, and not subject compact masses to the destructive sweep of modern missiles. It also makes the force more mobile, as well as more comprehensive of territory within its range of fire. All this, however, is matter of detail and not of substance, in the scientific conduct of campaigns during a protracted and widely extended series of operations in the field.

Military science itself is but the art of employing force to vindicate, or execute, authority. To meet an emergency adequately, wisely, and successfully, is the expressive logic of personal, municipal, and military action. The brain power is banded to various shaftings, and the mental processes may differ by virtue of different applications; but the prime activities are the same. In military studies, as in all collegiate or social preparation, the soldier, the lawyer, or the scientist, must be in the man, and not the necessary product of a certificate or a diploma. The simplest possible definition of a few terms in military use will elucidate the narrative as its events develop the War for American Independence, under the direction of Washington as Commander-in-Chief.

Six cardinal principles are thus stated:

I. Strategy.—To secure those combinations which will ensure the highest possible advantage in the employment of military force.

Note.—The strategical principles which controlled the Revolutionary campaigns, as defined in Chapter X. had their correspondence in 1861–1865, when the Federal right zone, or belt of war, was beyond the Mississippi River, and the left zone between the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. The Confederate forces, with base at Richmond, commanded an interior line westward, so that the same troops could be alternatively used against the Federal right, left, and centre, while the latter must make a long détour to support its advance southward from the Ohio River. Federal superiority on sea and river largely contributed to success. American sea-control in 1898, so suddenly and completely secured, was practically omnipotent in the war with Spain. The navy, was a substantially equipped force at the start. The army, had largely to be created, when instantly needed, to meet the naval advance. Legislation also favored the navy by giving to the commander-in-chief the services of eminent retired veterans as an advisory board, while excluding military men of recent active duty from similar advisory and administrative service.