Military Reminiscences of the Civil War: Autobiographical Account by a General of the Union Army. Jacob D. Cox
which my evident annoyance gave it only helps to revive more perfectly the local color of the time. In the case of Mr. Smith's "negro boy Mike," I had the satisfaction of finding in the intercepted correspondence of his son the major, the express recognition of the man's right to liberty by reason of his use in the enemy's service, and could not deny myself the pleasure of calling attention to it in my letters to headquarters.
My experience during the winter begot in me a rooted dislike for the military administration of the border districts, and strengthened my wish to be in the most active work at the front, where the problems were the strictly military ones of attack and defence in the presence of the armed enemy. 10 Not that the winter was without compensating pleasures, for we were recipients of much social attention of a very kindly and agreeable sort, and carried away cherished memories of refined family circles in which the collision of opinions and the chafing of official relations were forgotten in hearty efforts to please. With the unconditionally loyal people our sympathies were very deep, for we found them greatly torn and disturbed in the conflict of duties and divided affections, where scarce a single household stood as a unit in devotion to the cause, and where the triumph of either side must necessarily bring affliction to some of them.
1 Official Records, vol. v. pp. 287,288.
2 id., p. 657.
3 Id., pp. 669, 685. On January 21 I called attention to the anomaly of bounding the department by the Kanawha River on the south, and correction was at once made by General McClellan. Id., p. 706.
4 Id., pp. 670, 691.
5 Official Records, vol. v. p. 671.
6 Id. pp. 259, 657.
7 Appointed Captain and Assistant Commissary of Subsistence, U. S. Vols., October 1.
8 Letter of Major Darr, acting A. A. G., November 18.
9 Letter of Captain Hartsuff, A. A. G., December 13.
10 I did not lack evidence that a steady rule, based on principles frankly avowed and easily understood, was rapidly bringing the people to be content to be in the Union, even those most inclined to secession. This result I am gratified to find attested by General Lee and General Floyd, who in dispatches very lately printed confessed the effect my administration had in quieting the valley during the first months of my occupation. Official Records, vol. li. pt. ii. pp. 220, 225.
CHAPTER IX
VOLUNTEERS AND REGULARS
High quality of first volunteers--Discipline milder than that of the regulars--Reasons for the difference--Practical efficiency of the men--Necessity for sifting the officers--Analysis of their defects--What is military aptitude?--Diminution of number in ascending scale--Effect of age--Of former life and occupation--Embarrassments of a new business--Quick progress of the right class of young men--Political appointments--Professional men--Political leaders naturally prominent in a civil war--"Cutting and trying"--Dishonest methods--An excellent army at the end of a year--The regulars in 1861--Entrance examinations for West Point--The curriculum there--Drill and experience--Its limitations--Problems peculiar to the vast increase of the army--Ultra-conservatism--Attitude toward the Lincoln administration--"Point de zéle"--Lack of initiative--Civil work of army engineers--What is military art?--Opinions of experts--Military history--European armies in the Crimean War--True generalship--Anomaly of a double army organization.
The work of sifting the material for an army which went on through the winter of 1861–62, naturally suggests an analysis of the classes of men who composed both parts of the military force of the nation,--the volunteers and the regulars. I need add nothing to what I have already said of the unexampled excellence of the rank and file in the regiments raised by the first volunteering. Later in the war, when "bounty jumping" and substitution for conscripts came into play, the character of the material, especially that recruited in the great cities and seaports, was much lower. I think, however, that the volunteers were always better men, man for man, than the average of those recruited for the regular army. The rigidity of discipline did not differ so much between good volunteer regiments and regulars, as the mode of enforcing it. There were plenty of volunteer regiments that could not be excelled in drill, in the performance of camp duty, or in the finish and exactness of all the forms of parades and of routine. But it was generally brought about by much milder methods of discipline. A captain of volunteers was usually followed by his neighbors and relatives. The patriotic zeal of the men of the company as well as their self-respect made them easily amenable to military rule so far as it tended to fit them better to do the noble work they had volunteered for, and on which their hearts were as fully set as the hearts of their colonels or generals. In the regular army, officers and men belonged to different castes, and a practically impassable barrier was between them. Most of the men who had enlisted in the long years of domestic peace were, for one cause or another, outcasts, to whom life had been a failure and who followed the recruiting sergeant as a last desperate resource when every other door to a livelihood was shut. 1 The war made some change in this, but the habits and methods of the officers had been formed before that time and under the old surroundings. The rule was arbitrary, despotic, often tyrannical, and it was notorious that the official bearing and the language used toward the regular soldiers was out of the question in a volunteer organization. Exceptions could be found in both parts of the service, but there could be no doubt as to the custom and the rule. To know how to command volunteers was explicitly recognized by our leading generals as a quality not found in many regular officers, and worth noting when found. A volunteer regiment might have a "free and easy" look to the eye of a regular drill sergeant, but in every essential for good conduct and ready manoeuvre on the field of battle, or for heroic efforts in the crisis of a desperate engagement, it could not be excelled if its officers had been reasonably competent and faithful. There was inevitable loss of time in the organization and instruction of a new army of volunteers; but after the first year in the field, in every quality which tends to give victory in battle to a popular cause, the volunteer regiment was, in my judgment, unquestionably superior. It is necessary to say this, because there has been a fashion of speaking of regular regiments or brigades in the civil war as though they were capable of accomplishing more in proportion to their numbers or on some occasion of peculiar peril than the volunteers. I did not find it so.
The material in the line, then, was as good as could be; the weakness was in the officers, and it was here that the sifting was necessary. Most of these officers had themselves enlisted as privates, and their patriotic zeal was not to be questioned. They had been chosen to be lieutenants, captains, and even colonels by their men because of faith in their ability to lead, or to recognize their influence in raising the troops. Yet a considerable part of them proved incompetent to command. The disqualifications were various. Some lacked physical strength and stamina. Some had or quickly developed intemperate habits. Some lacked the education and intelligence needful for official responsibility. Some were too indolent to apply themselves to the work of disciplining