The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863. Various
showing off their new uniforms at home. It must have been comforting to over-sensitive privates to hear how colonels and quartermasters were snubbed in their turn by the 'general staff.' The regimental headquarters, where these crest-fallen dignitaries should have laid their weary heads, were tenanted by Captains A., who had a pretty wife with him, and B., who gave such nice little suppers, and C., whose mother was first cousin to the ugly half-breed that blew the general's trumpet from the roof of the great house in the centre. Wherefore the colonel, the surgeon, the chaplain, the quartermaster, and the 'subscriber' were content to spread their blankets for the first night with a brace of captains, on the particularly dirty floor of Company F., and dream those 'soldier dreams' in which Mrs. Soldier and two or three little soldiers—assorted sizes—run down to the garden gate to welcome the hero home again, while guardian angels clap their wings in delight and take a receipt for him as 'delivered in good order and well-conditioned' to the deities that preside over the domestic altar.
Such dreams as these were easy matters for most of us, who had no experience. With our regimental colors fresh from the hands of the two inevitable young ladies in white, who had presented them (with remarks suitable to the occasion), we saw nothing before us but a march of double quick to 'glory or the grave.' Luckily we had cooler heads among us: men who had fought in Mexico, camped in the gulches of California, drilled hordes of Indians in South America, led men in desperate starving marches over the plains. These went about making us comfortable in a very prosaic, practical way. The first call for volunteers from the ranks was not to defend a breach or lead a forlorn hope, as we had naturally expected, but—for carpenters. They were set to knocking down the clumsy bunks in the men's quarters and rebuilding them in more convenient shape, piercing the roof for ventilators, building shanties for the dispensary and the quartermaster's stores. Colonel and chaplain made a daily tour of the cook rooms and commissary, smelt of meat, tasted hard bread, dived into dinner pots, examined coffee grounds to see whether any of the genuine article had accidentally got mixed with the post supply of burnt peas. The surgeon commenced vaccinating the men, and taking precautions against every possible malady, old age, I believe, included. Meanwhile the adjutant and the sergeant-major shut themselves up in a back room like a counting house, and were kept busy copying muster rolls, posting huge ledger-like books, making out daily and nightly returns, receiving and answering elaborate letters from the official personages in the next building. The company officers and men were assigned their regular hours for drill, as well as for everything else that men could think of doing in barracks. In short, we found ourselves all drawn into the operations of a vast, cumbrous, slow-moving machine, with a great many more cogs than drivers, through which no regiment or any other body could pass rapidly. The time required in our case was nearly three months.
How much of this delay was necessary or beneficial I leave for wiser military critics than myself to discuss. The complaint it awakened at the time has almost been forgotten in the glory of the achievements which followed when the great army actually began to move. Perhaps it is remembered only by those who mourn the brave young hearts that never reached the battle field, but perished in the inglorious conflict with disease and idleness. Few appreciate the fearful loss suffered from these causes, unless they were present from day to day, watching the regular morning reports, or meeting the frequent burial squads that thronged the road to the cemetery. Even in a place like St. Louis, with amply provided hospitals, and all the appliances of medical skill at hand, men died at a rate which would have carried off half the army before its three years' service expired. And of these deaths by far the greater portion were the direct consequence of idleness and its consequent evils in camp. The healthiest body of troops I saw in Missouri were busy night and day with scouting parties, and living in their tents upon a bleak hilltop, ten miles from the nearest hospital or surgeon. When their regiment was concentrated after four months' service, this company alone marched in the hundred and one men it had brought from home, not a single man missing or on the sick list. Perhaps another such instance could scarcely be found in the whole army.
But it was not by death alone that precious material wasted faster than a whole series of battles could carry it off. Under such circumstances the living rot as well as the dead. Physically and morally the men deteriorate for want of occupation that interests them. Most of our Western volunteers were farmers' boys, fresh from an active, outdoor life. They were shut up in the barracks, with no exercise but three or four hours of monotonous drill, no outdoor life but a lounge over the level parade ground, and no amusements but cards and the sutler's shop. Their very comforts were noxious. The warm, close barracks in which they spent perhaps twenty hours out of the twenty-four, would enervate even a man trained to sedentary habits; and the abundant rations of hot food, consumed with the morbid appetite of men who had no other amusement, rendered them heavy and listless. In our regiment, at least, it was absolutely necessary to cut down the rations of certain articles, as for instance of coffee, and to prevent their too frequent use. The cooks told us that it was not an uncommon thing for a man to consume from four to six quarts of hot coffee at the three meals of a single day.
Upon their minds the influence was even greater than upon their bodies. More enthusiastic soldiers never assembled in the world than came up from all parts of the country to the various rendezvous of our volunteers. This is not merely the partial judgment of a fellow countryman. In conversation with old European officers of great experience, who had spent the autumn in instructing different regiments, I have heard testimony to this effect more flattering than anything which I, as an American, should dare to say. Of course a part of this enthusiasm was founded on an illusion which experience must sooner or later have dispelled; but wise policy would have husbanded it as long as possible, by putting them into service which should at the same time have fed their love of adventure and given them practice in arms. Even as a matter of drill—which to some of our officers seems to be the great end, and not merely the means of a soldier's life—this would have been an advantage. The drill of a camp of instruction is not only monotonous, but meaningless, because neither officers nor men are yet alive to its practical application. Had these men been placed at once where something seemed to depend on their activity, instruction in tactics would have been eagerly sought after, instead of being looked upon as an irksome daily task. Nor would it have been necessary for this purpose to place raw troops in positions of critical importance. The vast extent of our line of operations, and the wide tracts of disaffected country which were, or might easily have been, left behind it, offered an ample field for a training as thorough as the most rigid martinet could desire, at a safe distance from any enemy in force, but where they would have been kept under the qui vive by the belief that something was intrusted to them. Drill or no drill, I do not think there was a colonel in the barracks who did not know that his men would have been worth more if marched from the place of enlistment directly into the open field, than they were after months in a place where the whole tendency was to chill their patriotism by making them feel useless, and to wear off the fine edge of their patriotism by subjection to the merest mechanical process of instruction.
But without dwelling longer on a subject still so delicate as this, let it be said that the advantages of the camp of instruction were principally with the officers. These really learned many things they needed to know, and perhaps unlearned some that they needed as much to forget. I have hinted already at one of these latter lessons—that of their own insignificance. Familiarity breeds contempt, even with shoulder straps. It did the captains and majors and colonels, each of whom had been for a time the particular hero of his own village or county, not a little good to find themselves lost in the crowd, and quite overshadowed by the stars of the brigadiers. Even these latter did not look quite so portentous and dazzling when we saw them in whole constellations, paling their ineffectual rays before the luminary of headquarters. Many an ambitious youth, who had come from home with very grand though vague ideas of the personal influence he was to have upon the country's destinies, found it a wholesome exercise to stand in the mud at the gate all day as officer of the guard, and touch his hat obsequiously to the general staff. If there was good stuff in him he soon got over the first disappointment, and learned to put his shoulder more heartily to that of his men, when he found that his time was by no means too valuable to be chiefly spent in very insignificant employments. Some few, it is true, never could have done this, even if they had been brayed in a mortar. I remember one fussy little cavalry adjutant, who never allowed a private to pass him without a salute, or sit down in his presence. I lost sight of the fellow soon afterward, but it was