The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863. Various
I saw his name gazetted a week or two since, 'dismissed the service.'
As for regular instruction in tactics, there was perhaps as much as the nature of the case admitted, to wit, none at all. Every now and then a fine system would be organized, and promulgated in general orders. Sometimes a series of recitations were prescribed that would have dismayed a teachers' institute. Field officers were to say their lessons every evening at headquarters, and head classes from their own line in the forenoon. The company officers in turn were to teach non-commissioned ideas how to shoot. Playing truant was strictly forbidden; careless officers who should 'fail to acquire the lesson set for them' were to be reported, and, I presume, the unlucky man who missed a question would have seen 'the next' go above him till the bright boy of each class had worked his way up to the head. These systems did not prove a failure: they simply never went at all, but were quietly and unanimously ignored by teacher and teachee. Every man was left to thumb his Hardee in private, and find out what he lacked by his daily blunders on drill. These furnished ample subject for private study, as well as for animated discussion among the other military topics that occupied our leisure. Emulation and the fear of ridicule kept even the most indolent at work.
It was amusing to see how rapidly the esprit de corps—their own favorite word, which they took infinite pleasure in repeating on all occasions—grew upon our newly made warriors. How learned they were upon all the details of 'the service,' and how particularly jealous of the honors and importance of their own particular 'arm!' I used to listen with infinite relish to the discussion in our colonel's quarters, which happened to be a favorite rendezvous for the field officers of some half dozen different regiments, during the idle hours of the long winter evenings. No matter how the conversation commenced, it was sure to come down to this at last, and cavalry, infantry, and artillery blazed away at each other in a voluble discussion that was like Midshipman Easy's triangular duel multiplied by six.
'There's no use talking, colonel, you never have done anything against us in a fair hand-to-hand fight, and you never can.'
(You on this occasion may be supposed to be cavalry, personified in a long, lantern-jawed attorney from Iowa, while us stands for infantry, represented by an ex-drover from Indiana.)
'Never done anything, eh?' replies the attorney, who, on the strength of a commission and mustache of at least six months' date, ranks as quite a veteran in the party; 'what did you do at Borodino? Pretty show you made there when we came charging down upon you!'
'Oh, that was all somebody's fault—what's his name's, you know, that commanded there. Didn't find those charges work so well at Waterloo, did you?' Thus the ex-drover, fresh from the perusal of Halleck on Military Science.
'Ah, but you see they could not stand our grape and canister,' interposes artillery (Major Phelim O. Malley, now of the 99th Peoria Battery, till last month real-estate and insurance broker, No.– Dearborn street, basement).
'If we ploy into a hollow square'—
'Yes, but you see we come down obliquely and cut off your corners'—
'All they want then is a couple of field pieces; zounds, sir!'—(the major has found this expletive in Lever's novels, and adopted it as particularly becoming to a military man.)
'Echelon—charge—right guides—Buny Visty—Austerlitz'—
Meanwhile old Brazos and the Swiss major sit grimly silent, one nursing his lame shin, where the Mexican bullet struck him, the other drawing hard on his pipe and puffing out wreaths of smoke that hang like Linden's 'sulphurous canopy' over the combatants. I have no doubt a great deal of excellent tactics was displayed in these discussions; still less, if possible, that the zeal of the disputants was all the more creditable to them for their peaceful antecedents during their whole lives; but the ludicrous side of the scene was brought out all the more strongly by the silence of these old soldiers, who alone out of the whole party had ever seen what men actually could and did do on the battle field.
Sometimes these conversations took a high range, and dwelt upon the causes and the policy of the contest in which we were engaged. I do not think, however, that these were half so much talked or thought of among the officers as in the barracks of the men; and it is only justice to add, that among a large class of the privates I have heard them discussed with a clearness, a freedom from all prejudices and present interests, that surpassed the average deliberations of the shoulder straps. There never probably was so large an army assembled in the world where so great a proportion of the intelligence could be found in the ranks. Marked individual instances were constantly met with. There was at least one corporal in the –th, who occupied his leisure hours with the Greek Testament, that the time spent in fighting for his country might not be all lost to his education for the ministry. I hope the noble fellow will preach none the less acceptably without the arm that he left at Donelson. Another of our non-commissioned officers was a member of the Iowa Legislature. Could there be a happier illustration of the fine compliment paid by President Lincoln in his message of last summer to the rank and file of our army? Pity it must be added that no representations could procure him a furlough to allow him to take his seat during the session. Had he been a colonel, with $3,000 a year, the path would have been wide and smooth that led from his duties in the camp to his seat in Congress, or any other good place he was lucky enough to fill.
This, by the way, is only one instance of the greatest defect in our volunteer system: the broad and almost impassable gulf of demarcation between commissioned officers and enlisted men. The character of the army requires that this should be eradicated as soon as possible. Enthusiastic patriotism might make men willing to bear with it for a time, or while the war seemed a temporary affair. But since the conviction has settled down upon the popular mind that we are in for a long and tedious struggle, and that a great army of American citizens must be kept on foot during the whole of it, overshadowing all peaceful pursuits, and remoulding the whole character of our people, there begins to be felt also the need of organizing that army as far as possible in conformity with the genius of our people and Government. The greenest recruit expects to find in the army a sharp distinction of rank, and a strict obedience to authority, to which he has been a stranger in peaceful times. But he is disappointed and discouraged when he finds a needless barrier erected to divide men into two classes, of which the smallest retains to itself all the profits and privileges of the service. He comprehends very well that a captain needs higher pay and more liberty than a private, and a general than a captain; but he fails to see the reason why a second lieutenant should have four or five times the pay of an orderly sergeant, and be officially recognized all through the army regulations as a gentleman, while he who holds the much more arduous and responsible office is simply an 'enlisted man,' It will be much easier for him to discover why this is so than to find any good reason why it should remain so. We are managing an army of half a million by the routine intended for one of ten thousand, and we are organizing citizen volunteers under regulations first created for the most dissimilar army to be found in the civilized world. We adopted our army system from England, where there are widely and perpetually distinct classes of society in peace as well as war; the nobility and gentry furnishing all the officers, while the ranks are filled up with the vast crowd, poor and ignorant enough to fight for sixpence a day. To our little standing army of bygone days the system was well enough adapted, for in that we too had really two distinct classes of men. West Point furnished even more officers than we needed, with thorough education, and the refined and expensive habits that education brings with it. The ranks were filled with foreigners and broken-down men, who had neither the ambition nor the ability to rise to anything higher. But we have changed all that. The healthiest and best blood of our country is flowing in that country's cause. Our army is composed of more than half a million citizens, young, eager, ambitious, and trained from infancy each to believe himself the equal of any man on earth. With the privates under their command the officers have for the most part been playmates, schoolmates, associates in business, all through life. A trifle more of experience or of energy, or the merest accident sometimes has made one captain, while the other has gone into the ranks; but unless those men were created over again, you could not make between them the difference that the army regulations contemplate. Once off duty, there is nothing left to found it on.
'I say, Jack,' said an officer at Pittsburg Landing to an old crony who was serving as private in another company, 'where did you