Military Reminiscences of the Civil War: Autobiographical Account by a General of the Union Army. Jacob D. Cox
in Theory, outside the engineering proper. At an earlier day they had used Jomini's introduction to his "Grandes Opérations Militaires," and I am unable to say when its use was dropped. It is not my wish to criticise the course of study; on the other hand, I doubt if it could be much improved for boys who had only the preparation required by the law. But since we are trying to estimate its completeness as professional education fitting men to command armies in the field, it is absolutely necessary to note the fact that it did not pretend to include the military art in that sense. Its scientific side was in the line of engineering and that only. Its prize-men became engineers, and success at the academy was gauged by the student's approach to that coveted result.
That the French which was learned was not enough to open easily to the young lieutenant the military literature which was then found most abundantly in that language, would seem to be indicated by the following incident. In my first campaign I was talking with a regular officer doing staff duty though belonging in the line, and the conversation turned on his West Point studies. The little work of Jomini's mentioned above being casually referred to as having been in his course, I asked him if he had continued his reading into the History of the Seven Years' War of Frederick the Great, to which it was the introduction. He said no, and added frankly that he had not read even the Introduction in the French, which he had found unpleasantly hard reading, but in the English translation published under the title of the Art of War. This officer was a thoroughly estimable, modest, and intelligent man, and seemed in no way inferior to other line officers of his age and grade. It would of course be true that some men would build industriously upon the foundation laid at the academy, and perfect themselves in those things of which they had only acquired the elements; but the surroundings of frontier life at a post were so unfavorable that I believe few in fact did so. The officers of the engineer corps and the ordnance were specifically devoted to scientific careers, and could go steadily forward to expertness in their specialties. Those who were permanently attached to the staff corps or to bureaus at Washington had also opportunity to enlarge their professional knowledge by study if they were so inclined. But all these were exceptionally situated, and do not help us answer the question What kind and amount of military education was implied in the fact that a man had graduated at West Point and been sent to serve in the line? I have purposely omitted for the present to consider the physical training and the practical instruction in tactics by means of drill, because the question is in terms one of science, not of practice; that will come later. The conclusion is that the intellectual education at the Military Academy was essentially the same, as far as it went, as that of any polytechnic school, the peculiarly military part of it being in the line of engineering. In actual warfare, the laying out and construction of regular forts or the conduct of a regular siege is committed to professional engineers. For field work with an army, therefore, the mental furnishing of the West Point man was not superior to that of any other liberally educated man. In some of our volunteer regiments we had whole companies of private soldiers who would not have shunned a competitive examination with West Point classes on the studies of the Military Academy, excepting the technical engineering of fortifications. 6
Let us look now at the physical and practical training of the cadet. The whole period of his student life at West Point had more or less of this. He was taken as a raw recruit would be, taught the school of the soldier in marching, in the manual of arms, and in personal carriage. He passed on to the drill of the squad, the platoon, the company. The tactics of the battalion came last, and the cadet might become a corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, or captain in the corps if he showed aptitude for drill and tactics. It is noticeable, however, that Grant and Sheridan remained privates during their whole cadetship, and Sherman, though once he became sergeant, was put back in the ranks. The fair conclusion is that this part of the cadet discipline is not very closely connected with generalship, though it is important as preparation for the ready handling of a company or a battalion. Sherman tells us, in his Memoirs, that he studied evolutions of the line out of the books, as a new subject, when he was in camp in front of Washington, after the first battle of Bull Run. 7 The tactical education of the cadet stopped at the evolutions of the battalion, and for nearly all of them it was, even in that respect, the education of the soldier in the ranks and not of the officer, since a very small proportion became officers in the cadet corps.
This practical drill was, of course, the same as that which was used in organized militia regiments, and the famous Ellsworth Zouaves of Chicago, the New York Seventh Regiment, with a number of other militia regiments in different States, were sufficient proof that this training could be made as exact outside of the cadet corps as in it. It certainly was enough for the practical handling of the company and the regiment under the simplified tactics which not only prevailed during the war itself, but, with Upton's Manual as a basis, has been authoritatively adopted as an improvement upon the older and more complicated methods. It must not be forgotten that although our militia system had fallen into scandalous neglect, the voluntary efforts of citizen soldiers had kept many good independent companies organized everywhere, as well as full regiments in most of the older States; so that there were in fact more well-drilled regiments in the militia than there were in the little regular army. It was the small ratio all these, of both classes, bore to the demands of the gigantic war that was upon us, which made the problem so troublesome. The officers of the organized militia regiments, before the end of the three months' service, did what I have said it was desirable that those of the regular regiments should have done,--they scattered from their original commands and were active in organizing the new volunteer regiments. General De Trobriand, who went out as Colonel of the Fifty-fifth New York, says that the New York Seventh Regiment furnished three hundred officers to volunteer regiments. 8 In a similar way, though not to the same extent, the other organized and disciplined militia, in both Eastern and Western States, furnished the skeletons of numerous new regiments.
The really distinguishing feature in the experience of the regular officers of the line was their life in garrison at their posts, and their active work in guarding the frontier. Here they had become familiar with duty of the limited kind which such posts would afford. This in time became a second nature to them, and to the extent it reached, was, as other men's employments are, their business. They necessarily had to learn pretty thoroughly the army regulations, with the methods and forms of making returns and conducting business with the adjutant-general's office, with the ordnance office, the quartermaster's and subsistence departments, etc. In this ready knowledge of the army organization and its methods their advantage over the new volunteer officers was more marked, as it seemed to me, than in any and all other things. The routine of army business and the routine of drill had to be learned by every army officer. The regular officer of some years' standing already knew, as a matter of course, what a new volunteer officer must spend some time in learning. There is something of value also in the habit of mind formed in actual service, even if the service is in subaltern grades and on a petty scale. Familiarity with danger and with the expectation of danger is acquired, both by the Indian wars of the frontier and by the hunting and field sports which fill more or less of the leisure of garrison life.
But there were some drawbacks upon the value of the preparation for war which these officers possessed. There was a marked conservatism as to military methods and arms, and an almost slavish reverence for things which were sanctioned by European authority, especially that of the second French Empire. American invention was never more fruitful than when applied to military weapons. Repeating and magazine small arms, breach-loading cannon, and Gatling guns with other repeating artillery, were brought out or improved with wonderful variety of form and of demonstrable excellence. The regular army influence was generally against such innovations. Not once, but frequently, regular army officers argued to me that the old smooth-bore musket with "buck and ball" cartridge was the best weapon our troops could desire. We went through the war with a muzzle-loading musket, the utmost that any commander could do being to secure repeating rifles for two or three infantry regiments in a whole army. Even to the end the "regular" chiefs of artillery insisted that the Napoleon gun, a light smooth-bore twelve-pounder cannon, was our best field-piece, and at a time when a great campaign had reduced our forces so that a reduction of artillery was advisable,