Our staff corps and regular army are insignificant, compared with those of European nations, in which the average strength of the standing armies is from 250,000 to 300,000 men on the peace footing, and 400,000 to 600,000 on the war footing, with immense magazines of equipage and material, numerous military schools, and extensive organizations in all the departments incident to an army. Our own army has hitherto been modelled to a great extent on the English system—the most aristocratic of all in Europe, and consequently the least adapted to a republic. To this is attributable much of the jealousy hitherto felt in regard to the army and all pertaining to it. We are now, however, conforming more to the French system, and from it will probably be adopted any changes that may be introduced.
The French army, since Napoleon gave it the impress of his genius, has in many characteristics been well adapted to the peculiarities of republican institutions. A soldier can rise from the ranks to the highest command, by the exhibition of valor and ability, more easily, in fact, than he can in our own army, with which political favoritism has much to do in promotions and appointments. By a recent policy of our War Department, however, vacancies have been left in the subordinate commissioned officers of the regular army, which are to be filled exclusively from the ranks. Many deserving officers in the army have been private soldiers.
No system will be effective for providing an adequate military organization that does not include thorough instruction for officers. The prevailing feeling in our country, as remarked above, has rather been to underrate the army, and to look with some jealousy on the West Point Military Academy and its graduates. The present war has effected a change in this respect. The country owes too much to the educated regular officers for the organization and conduct of the volunteer forces, to be insensible of the merits of the system which produced them. A capable civilian can undoubtedly become just as good an officer of any rank as a graduate of West Point; but it must be through a course of study similar to that there pursued. No natural ability can supply the want of the scientific training in the military, more than in any other profession. Military science is only the result of all the experience of the past, embodied in the most comprehensive and practical form. Napoleon was a profound student of military history. In his Memoirs he observes: 'Alexander made 8 campaigns, Hannibal 17 (of which 1 was in Spain, 15 in Italy, and 1 in Africa), Cæsar made 15 (of which 8 were against the Gauls, and 5 against the legions of Pompey), Gustavus Adolphus 5, Turenne 18, the Prince Eugene of Savoy 18, and Frederic 11 (in Bohemia, Silesia, and upon the Elbe.) The history of these 87 campaigns, made with care, would be a complete treatise on the art of war. The principles one should follow, in both offensive and defensive war, flow from them as a source.'
To one familiar with the gradual progress in the organization of our armies, it is interesting to recur to the time when the first levies of volunteers were raised. Regiments were hurried into Washington half accoutred and indifferently armed. Officers and men were for the most part equally ignorant of the details, a knowledge of which enables a soldier to take care of himself in all circumstances. Staff officers knew nothing of the various departments and the methods of obtaining supplies. The Government had not been able to provide barrack accommodations for the immense irruption of 'Northern barbarians,' and the men were stowed like sheep in any unoccupied buildings that could be obtained. These were generally storehouses, without any cooking arrangements, so that when provisions were procured, no one knew what to do with them. Hundreds of men, who previously scarcely knew but that beef-steaks and potatoes grew already cooked and seasoned, could be seen every day sitting disconsolately on the curbstones cooking their pork on ramrods over little fires made with twigs gathered from the trees. Those who happened to be the lucky possessors of a few spare dimes, straggled off to restaurants. Washington, in those days, was only a great country-town, and not the immense city which the war has made it. The vague and laughable attempts of officers to assume military dignity and enforce discipline, with the careless insubordination of the men, furnished many amusing scenes. It was not easy for officer and man, who had gone to the same school, worked in the same shop, sung in the same choir, and belonged to the same base-ball club, to assume their new relations.
Privates would address their officer, 'I say, Bill, have you got any tobacco?' Officers would reply, 'Do you not know, sir, the proper method of addressing me?' Private would exclaim, 'Well, I guess now you're puttin' on airs, a'n't you?' Pompous colonels strutted about in a blaze of new uniforms, and even line officers then considered themselves of some consequence; while a brigadier-general was a sort of a demigod—a man to be revered as something infallible. Now-a-days old veterans care very little for even the two stars of a major-general, unless they know that the wearer has some other claims to respect than his shoulder straps.
As matters gradually became arranged, the troops were provided with tents, and encamped in the vicinity. Never was guard duty more vigilantly performed than in those camps around Washington. Every one of us came to the capital with the expectation of being immediately despatched to Virginia, and ordered to pitch into a miscellaneous fight with the rebels. Rebel guerillas and spies were supposed to be lurking in the surroundings of the capital, and 'taking notes' in all the camps. Woe betide the unsuspicious stranger who might loiter curiously around the encampments. With half a dozen bayonets at his breast he was hurried off in utter amazement to the guard house. At night the sentinels saw 'in every bush' a lurking rebel. Shots were pattering all night in every direction. Unfortunate straggling cows were frequently reduced to beeves by the bullets of the wary guardians. The colonel's horse broke loose one night, and, while browsing around, his long, flowing tail, the colonel's pride, was reduced to an ignominious 'bob' by a bullet, which neatly severed it near the root. Many was the trigger pulled at me, many the bullet sent whizzing at my head, as I returned to camp after an evening in the city. Fortunately, the person fired at was usually safe—any one within the circle of a hundred feet diameter was likely to receive the ball. One evening, about dusk, going into camp, I took a running jump over a ditch, and this rapid motion so frightened an honest German sentinel—probably a little muddled with lager—that he actually forgot to fire, and came at me in a more natural way with his musket clubbed. I escaped a broken head at the expense of a severely bruised arm. The rule for challenging, it used to be said, was to 'fire three times, and then cry 'halt!' instead of the reverse, as prescribed in the regulations.
When the order—long anticipated—for actually invading Virginia arrived, then was there excitement. Every man felt the premonition of battle, and nerved himself for conflict. As we marched down to Long Bridge, at midnight, perfect silence prevailed. Breaths were suspended, footfalls were as light as snowflakes, orders were given in hollow whispers. We placed our feet on the 'sacred soil' with more emotion than the Normans felt when landing in England, or the Pilgrims at Plymouth. This was war—the real, genuine thing. But our expectations were not realized. As the 'grand army' advanced, the scattered rebel pickets withdrew. The only fatality of the campaign was the death of the gallant but indiscreet Ellsworth. We had our first experience of lying out doors in our blankets. How vainglorious we felt over it! Many a poor fellow complained jocosely of the hardship and exposure, whom since I have seen perfectly content to obtain a few pine boughs to keep him from being submerged in an abyss of mud. Many, alas! have gone to a couch where their sleep will be no more broken by the reveille of drum and fife and bugle—in the trenches of Yorktown, in the thickets of Williamsburg, in the morasses of the Chickahominy, on the banks of the Antietam, at the foot of those fatal heights at Fredericksburg, in the wilderness of Chancellorsville, on the glorious ridge of Gettysburg. Comrades of the bivouac and the mess! ye are not forgotten in that sleep upon the fields where swept the infernal tide of battle, obliterating so much glorious life, leaving so much desolation! Even amid the roar of cannon, exulting in their might for destruction, amid the shrieking of the merciless shells, amid the blaze of the deadly musketry, memories of you occur to us. We resolve that your lives shall not have been sacrificed in vain. And in these long, dreary, monotonous days of winter, as the sleet rattles on our frail canvas covering, and the wind roars in our rude log chimneys, while the jests go around and the song arises, thoughts of the battle fields of the past cross our minds—we recall the incidents of fierce conflicts—we say, there and there fell——, no nobler fellows ever lived! A blunt and hasty epitaph, but the desultory vicissitudes of a soldier's life permit no other—we expect no other for ourselves when our turn to follow you shall come. So we break out into our favorite chorus:
'Then we'll stand by our glasses steady,
And we'll drink to our ladies' eyes.
Three cheers for the dead already,
And huzza for the next man that dies.
Though your graves are unmarked, save by the simple broad slab from which storms have already effaced the pencilled legend, or perhaps only by the murderous fragment of iron, which lies half imbedded on the spot where you fell and where you lie, yet you live in the memory of your comrades, you live in the hearts of those who were desolated by your death, you live in that eternal record of heaven where are written the names of those who have given their lives to promote the truth and the freedom which God has guaranteed to humanity in the great charters of Nature and Revelation. For we are fighting in a holy cause. No crusade to redeem Eastern shrines from infidels, no struggle for the privilege of religious freedom, no insurrection for civil independence, has been more holy than this strife against the great curse and its abettors, who seek to make a land of freedom a land of bondage to substitute for a Union of freemen, miserable oligarchies controlled by breeders of slaves. If we die in this cause, we have lived a full life. An anomalous state of things had existed between the time of the attack on Sumter and the 'invasion' of Virginia. Although the war had in reality commenced, communication was not suspended between Washington and Alexandria. On the day following the march over the Potomac, we found the plans of intrenchments marked out by wooden forms on the spots which subsequently became Fort Corcoran, opposite Georgetown, Fort Runyon, opposite Washington, and Fort Ellsworth, in front of Alexandria. How this had so speedily been done by the engineers I did not learn until many months afterward, when one of the party who planned the works described the modus operandi. They went over to Virginia in a very rustic dress, and professed to the rebel pickets to be from 'down country,' come up to take a look at 'them durned Yankees.' So they walked around unmolested, selected the sites for the intrenchments, formed the plans in their minds, made some stealthy notes and sketches, and, returning to Washington, plotted the works on paper, gave directions to the carpenters about the frames, which were constructed; and, after the army crossed, these were put in their proper positions, tools were placed conveniently, and, soon after the crossing was made, the men commenced to work.
In raising these intrenchments, drilling and organizing, the army passed about a month—varied only by alarms two or three times a week at night that the rebels were coming, whereupon the troops turned out and stood in line till daylight. It was shrewdly suspected that these alarms were purposely propagated from headquarters to accustom the men to form themselves quickly at night without panic. In after times, in front of Richmond, we had such duty to perform, without any factitious reasons. It was a matter of necessary precaution to stand to our arms nightly for two or three hours before daybreak.