Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals

by William Franklin Gore Shanks

SOME PECULIARITIES OF OUR VETERANS.

Every leader of our armies has had his story written—has carved it out with his sword, and impressed himself on the time.

But who shall write the history of our soldiers?

Who shall dare attempt to tell the story or portray the characteristics of our veterans?

The nation, in its hour of distress, found leaders worthy to lead in any cause. No better marshals followed the great Napoleon. We shall leave to posterity the task of comparing our greatest general, Grant, with Napoleon; but the present generation may be bold enough to defy any ardent admirer of the "Little Corporal" to find among his marshals the equal of Grant, who rather resembles in his characteristics, and, it is said, in his features too, the conqueror of Napoleon. We developed, indeed, counterparts for all the great generals of modern warfare. The tenacious Thomas has the colossal proportions of mind and body of Kleber, the clearness in danger of Massena, and, though ponderous and unwieldy in his movements, is not more so than was Macdonald. Halleck, like Marmont, "understands the theory of war perfectly," and we might say of him, as Soult once said of Marmont, and in the same sarcastic sense, that "History will tell what he did with his knowledge." His biographer's description of Mack, wherein he says, "Although able in the war office, he was wholly deficient in the qualities of a commander in the field," is a perfect description of Halleck, and adding the paragraph about Mack's popularity with the soldiers it applies equally well to McClellan. The "first strategist of Europe," Soult, was not one whit the superior in conception of Sherman, and not his equal in mobility and energy. Sherman has all the vigor and acuteness which characterized Frederick the Great, and is at heart his equal as a military despot. Hooker has all the ardor, and Howard all the enthusiasm of Gustavus, and were capable of as great things. Steedman has all the roughness, nonchalance, and impudence of Suwaroff. McPherson was a Moreau, alike young, indecisive, and unfortunate. True, we have developed many Grouchys, who can not command above a few thousand men, and several Berthiers, who can not even calculate a day's march correctly; but we have also given opportunity to one or two Neys in Sheridan and Rousseau, and several Murats in Hancock, Logan, and Gordon Granger.

But not less worthy of the cause have been the men who fought in the ranks of our armies, and still more worthy to be compared to the best armies of Europe than are our generals to be paralleled with the great leaders of Europe. The superiors of our veterans never witnessed battle. They form, as combined in armies, a study not less enticing and interesting than that of the characters of their leaders.

One of the many fallacies which have been dissipated by our late warlike experience is the idea which once prevailed that an uneducated man made as good, if not a better soldier than the educated man. When the late war began, it was an assertion made as positively as frequently. It was believed, particularly by the regular officers, that the persons of the former class more readily and completely adapted themselves to the discipline of the camps—more readily became the pliant and obedient tools that regular soldiers are too often made. It is to the veteran volunteers of the late war for the Union that we are indebted for the explosion of this fallacy. The proofs of its falsity are not less interesting than conclusive.

Every reader familiar with the history of modern warfare in Europe must have noticed, in watching the events of the late rebellion in this country, the very great difference between the practice of war as carried on in Europe and by ourselves. The rules have been the same; the theory of war is too firmly and philosophically established to be changed. It can not be said that we originated a single new rule, but our application of those long established has been unlike any other practice known to history. The extent of the field of operations, the peculiar configuration of the country, and the extended line of coast and inland frontier which each party to the contest had to guard, conspired to this end, and caused to be originated such peculiarities of warfare as long and arduous raids by entire armies, flank marches of an extent and boldness never before conceived, the construction of many leagues of fortified lines, and the execution of strategic marches of great originality and brilliancy, while there have been effected at the same time, owing to changes and improvements in the arms, several innovations in minor tactics not less curious than important. The contending parties fought dozens of battles, each of which would have been decisive of a war between any two of the great powers of Europe. There the limits of the field of operations are restricted by the presence of armed neutral powers on each frontier. Here the line of frontier extended across a whole continent. No necessities exist there, as here, for large numbers of large armies. The most important and extensive modern European wars witnessed the prosecution of only one important operation at a time, while in this country we have carried on several campaigns simultaneously, and fought pitched battles whose tactical as well as strategic success depended on the result of operations five hundred miles distant. Bragg won the victory of Chickamauga only by the aid of re-enforcements sent him from Richmond; the besieged army of Rosecrans at Chattanooga was saved from dispersion only by the timely re-enforcements sent him, under Hooker, from Washington; while Schofield, with twenty thousand men, after fighting at Nashville, Tennessee, in the middle of winter, was operating in North Carolina, opening communications with Sherman, a fortnight subsequently. In Europe, concentration is forced on each party by the configuration and confined area of the seat of war. In this country the opposite effect has naturally been the result of the opposite circumstances, and the finest display of generalship which we have had was shown by Grant in the consummate skill with which, in the latter year of the war, he concentrated our two greatest armies, and employed his cavalry against the vital point of the rebellion, while with the fractional organizations he kept the enemy employed in the far West. Generally speaking, any two European powers at war are represented each by a single army, which are brought together upon a field of battle to decide at a blow the question in dispute, and thus the European generals are afforded better chances for the display of tactical abilities. In Europe, cavalry plays an important part on every battle-field, while in this country its assistance has seldom been asked in actual battle, though a no less effective application has been made of it in destroying communications. Except in the battle of General Sheridan, and in some instances where accident has brought cavalry into battle, our troopers were never legitimately employed. The art of marching as practiced in Europe was also varied here, and the European system of supplying an army is very different from our own. Their lines of march are decided by the necessities for providing cantonments in the numerous villages of the country, while on this continent marches are retarded, if not controlled, by the necessity of carrying tents for camps. The parallel which is here merely outlined might be pursued by one better fitted for the task to a highly suggestive and interesting conclusion.

In the same sense, and in still better defined contrast, the armies of America and of Europe have differed in their personnel. The armies of the principal powers of Europe are composed of men forced to arms by necessity in time of peace, and conscriptions in time of war; not, like the people of our own country, volunteering when the crisis demanded, with a clear sense of the danger before them, and for the stern purpose of vindicating the flag, and forcing obedience to the laws of the country. The European soldiers are conscripted for life, become confirmed in the habits of the camp, and are subjected to a system of discipline which tends to the ultimate purpose of rendering them mere pliant tools in the hands of a leader; while those of the United States, separated from the outer world only by the lax discipline necessary to the government of a camp, are open to every influence that books, that letters, and, to a certain extent, that society can lend. The highest aim of the European system is to sink individuality, and to teach the recruit that he is but the fraction of a great machine, to the proper working of which his perfectness in drill and discipline is absolutely necessary. In the United States volunteer army this same system was only partially enforced, and individuality was lost only on the battle-field, and then only so far as was necessary to morale did the man sink into the soldier. The private who in camp disagreed and disputed with his captain on questions of politics or science was not necessarily disobedient and demoralized on the battle-field. No late opportunity for a comparison between the prowess of our own and any European army has been presented, though the reader will have very little difficulty in convincing himself that the discipline of our troops in the South was better than that of the English in the Crimea or the French in Italy; while the "outrages of the Northern soldiers," at which England murmured in her partiality for the rebels, were not certainly as horrible as those committed by her own troops in India.

This same difference was visible in the personnel of our own and the rebel armies, and it resulted from the same cause, and that cause was education. The Union army was superior in prowess to that of the South because superior in discipline, and it was superior in discipline because superior in education. The Union army was recruited from a people confirmed in habits of industry, and inured to hard and severe manual and mental labor. That of the rebels was recruited from among men reared in the comparative idleness of agricultural life, and not habituated to severe toil, or conscripted from that hardier class of "poor whites" whose spirits had been broken by long existence in a state of ignorance and of slavery not less abject because indirectly enforced and unsuspectedly endured. Neither fraction of the rebel army, as a class, was the equal either in refinement, education, or habits of the men of the North, nor were both combined in an army organization equal in discipline, or the courage and effectiveness which results from it, to that which sprang to the nation's aid in 1861. Although the camp morality of both armies might have been better, there can be no doubt in any unprejudiced mind that the moral sentiment of the soldiers of the North was much more refined and correct than that of the organized forces of the South. Not only was their discipline better, not only were they under superior control in battle and in camp, but when, at times, relieved of the restrictions which are thrown around camps, their thoughts naturally turned less to dissipation and excesses than those of the Southern soldiers. The military despotism at the South was much more severely enforced by the rebel armies than it was by our own, though looked upon as that of an enemy. The excesses which at times existed in both armies were of Southern parentage. Sherman's "bummers" were legitimate descendants of Morgan's raiders and Stuart's cavalry, and at no time during the period in which they were "let loose" in Georgia and South Carolina could they excel Wheeler's cavalry in the art of plundering and destroying. The destruction of Atlanta and Columbia by our army under Sherman occurred nearly two years after the burning of Chambersburg by the rebels under Ewell.