Chapter II: Part 2

First of all, I’d better warn you to turn the dial, if you don’t want to hear some shocking things about ourselves--things I daresay you haven’t heard before. You remember what Hegel said--“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.” I think he meant that we just won’t say, “Because Mark Anthony, Aaron Burr and Belgium did those things, we won’t do them either.” O no, we must poke our nose right into the fire and get our fair eyebrows burnt off, before we beware. You and I often take singeings like that and charge them up to human nature. But as a people after our Revolution we took red-hot scorchings all over the face and down the body over and over again. Never did we profit less by the bungling of any activity than we did in those years following our escape into freedom. But I’d better tell you the facts and let you judge for yourself.

And yet--I hesitate to tell them--these black things that our histories cover up with a sheet, a lily white sheet. As often as I have looked at them I still get a quake in the stomach. But maybe it’s best that we do look them in the face--in order to enter into the big charity of preventive medicine.

Well here goes! After the Revolution, in the face of Washington’s pleading, Steuben’s example, and stout statesmen’s warnings, we cast out discipline and training like life boats from a new ship and reduced the army to eighty men. Then we put seven hundred on legal paper, who couldn’t be raised or kept going. Three years after the war we had for the common defense less than a thousand men poorly equipped and trained and scattered in the lonely forts on our borders--the equivalent of one hundred policemen on the outskirts of Boston today, with none in the city. So when Daniel Shay organized his rebellion, forced the court to adjourn and marched on Springfield, he had things pretty much his own way. It was only after tumult and bloodshed that peace was restored, whereas a small, well-trained force at hand would doubtless have kept the uprising from even starting. But the people refused to look at this picture--refused to take out preventives or insurance against the dreadful happenings to follow. Even when the United States became a nation and our Constitution was adopted, we had an army of the magnificent size of five hundred ninety-five men. Can you believe it? But listen to the consequence of this neglect. Seven years after Revolution, one thousand souls in Kentucky alone perished by tomahawk and arrow, with no one to protect them. Then a force of hastily recruited men in Ohio were ambushed and wiped out. The next year fourteen hundred quickly raised defenders were also annihilated. And of course our weakness furnished the savage with a new courage for depredations, so that the thousands of persons who perished cannot now even be estimated. There was only one bright spot in this decade of terror. Washington, despite the laxness of the country, selected Anthony Wayne to lead troops against the Indians. Wayne, who had seen Steuben’s careful coaching, trained his men for over a year before he took them into action. At the Battle of Fallen Timber, eleven years after the Revolution, he won our first well-executed victory over any sort of disorder. The Indians were so completely spanked that they let the settler live in peace for a long time--and thousands of lives were thus saved. But this action was a live coal in a bed of ashes. For soon the war scares crept steadily upon us--with France fifteen years after the Revolution, with Spain twenty years after, with Great Britain twenty-five years after. At each new scare, Congress voted huge sums of money and called out thousands of men on paper, but at no time did our actual forces even poorly trained, number four thousand men. The soldier seemed to be the thermometer of the nation’s fear. His numbers would rise and fall like the encased mercury to record the heat and cold of the people. But he never rose in time before, or stayed long enough afterward, to have any effect upon the temperature. He just didn’t exist in time. William Duane in his writings of the period complained, “There is no discipline; there is even no system; and there are gross misconceptions on the subject. There appears to have been a disposition to discourage the acquisition of military knowledge.” So we arrived at our Second War with Great Britain, twenty-nine years after the Revolution, weaker proportionally than when we faced that war.

Now the land warfare of 1812 would be so funny, if it weren’t tragic; so laughable, if it weren’t shameful, that our school histories just must omit much of it, if they’re going to show that we are the perfect people of the world. You could scarcely describe the affair in football language, as I did with the Revolution, because the candidates for that gridiron didn’t stay long enough to last much after the kick-off. It had better be classified as an open tournament of all games and events, under any rules which the particular coach wanted to make, and at any time he wanted to play. It probably could be described somewhat as a track-meet, if it were confined to running events. I tell you those men who played against or rather opposite Great Britain the second time, and who took no coaching for their particular stunts, could outsprint anything you’ve seen in shorts. The first event was staged at Detroit where our force of eighteen hundred had covered themselves up with fortifications. On the appearance of only twelve hundred of the enemy, the eighteen hundred gallantly surrendered without firing a shot or putting up any sort of resistance. This display of talent was soon followed by even a more disgraceful one at Queenstown. General Van Rensselaer got together nearly three thousand hastily recruited fellows at Lewiston to take the heights across the river. Two hundred and twenty-five picked men succeeded in crossing and stormed the place. This little courageous band withstood charge after charge of the enemy, hoping for reenforcements. But the large force on the American side refused to budge or even help their stricken comrades, who were finally killed or captured. After seeing their gallant fellows perish, they made their way to their homes quite quickly. A little later General Harrison got together from four states ten thousand men with no background or experience of warfare. After a short march and slight flurry with the Indians their speed in getting back to their homes and camp was far beyond the most sanguine expectations. You couldn’t exactly say they ran. No, they evaporated and their work was over. Then General Dearborn sent an expedition of fifteen hundred men against a small post on the River LaColle. The British garrison consisted of only two hundred men, seven and one-half times smaller force than ours. But by unskilled leadership the American columns were separated and had an exciting time firing into each other while the enemy escaped. After all these escapades, along came General Smythe, who openly confessed how wrong other leaders had been and how he was the one hope of the war. By bombastic proclamations he induced over five thousand men to come to him at Black Rock for an invasion of Canada. On the promised day for the crossing, less than half the command embarked in the morning and waited there for the order to push across. In the afternoon, Smythe sensing the weakness of his troops, ordered them to disembark, and stated that the expedition was temporarily postponed. The men were so resentful that he promised he would invade Canada at a later date. Three days afterward he got them into the boats--and then out of them the very same way. The scene of riot and discontent was indescribable. Men fired off their weapons in every direction, and threatened Smythe’s life. Hunted and pursued, he finally made his way to his home in Virginia, and his command dispersed in disorder.

The next episode was that of General Winchester who sent Colonel Lewis to take Frenchtown, which he captured with a superior force. But after he had gained his victory, his soldiers were so lawless, undisciplined and ignorant of the first essentials of precaution, that the enemy returned and killed or captured the whole of the ten hundred and fifty Americans. Then came two successful expeditions. General Pike with seventeen hundred picked men took Toronto garrisoned by half that number and General Harrison with a force three times as great as the enemy, won a victory at Thames River. But these engagements were isolated and did not have much effect upon the war. Then General Hampton marched on Montreal with about five thousand untrained men, who met eight hundred Canadian regulars, before whom they fled in utter panic. After this General Wilkinson tried the same thing with a similar force. When his advance guard of sixteen hundred men met eight hundred British at Chrysler’s Field, they did the usual scampering and Wilkinson gave up the idea of invading Canada. After all this weakness there was nothing to stop the enemy from swooping down upon us. They took Fort Niagara, occupied Lewiston, Youngstown and Manchester and burned Buffalo. When six hundred and fifty British and Indians appeared before Black Rock, nearly three thousand Americans going by the name of soldiers ran away without even aiming--ran to cover so fast that the enemy had no trouble pillaging and destroying everything in sight.

But through these lowering clouds of neglect and ignorance there came a rift of sunshine. Three young generals, Brown, Scott, Ripley, in spite of the backward administration, decided on their own hook in these dark ages to pull out of their shelves the old learning of Washington and Steuben, to have a little renaissance of their own. For a year they worked on preparing thirty-five hundred men for real service in the field. And they were rewarded by the heroic battles of Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane. Ah, yes, our histories record these actions, but they don’t tell why they were successful. The men were trained and disciplined. And these two contests put a wholesome stop to depredations and invasions of American soil in the north.

Yet much of that work was counteracted by Bladensburg, the prime disgrace of American History. Little anxiety had been felt in Washington, over three thousand British troops who had been hovering about in the Chesapeake for a year. The Secretary of War, the President and General Winder fell into a lengthy argument about how many troops should be called out to oppose this force. Meanwhile, the enemy was marching uninterruptedly toward our Capital. Finally sixty-four hundred Americans were collected just before the battle to oppose the invaders. The camp of men was wild with disorder and drink, while our so-called leaders were stupid with perplexity. Just before actual contact the three gentlemen mentioned above, fell to discussing the situation as if it were something quite new. The troops were posted on the heights--badly. At the firing of some harmless rockets, our force which outnumbered the enemy two to one, fled right through the nation’s Capitol, leaving it open to plunder and rapine. Why the British chose to burn only the public buildings, was probably due to their sportsmanship.

Of course, General Jackson did excellent defensive work at New Orleans, but that was after the war was over--after the whistle had blown. Of course the Navy, too, did perfect work. The government had seen to it that they had been well-trained for a long time before the war. There were no novices in that organization.

All these actions on land were really more disgraceful than I have described them. Throughout the War of 1812, as you see, most any unqualified man could be put in the saddle and every kind of unprepared man could be put in the field to fight. We were helpless, hopeless, impatient, disgraceful, because we had discarded training and foresight in the years beforehand. In this war, over two decades after we had become a nation, we committed all the errors of the Revolution to a greater degree--and one more. We had no management or leadership--no commander-in-chief or the commonest business organization. Fine manhood, for want of previous training was held up to ridicule, suffering, casualties, and disgrace. Now for the figures. We called out over half a million men and could not drive a maximum of sixteen thousand from our shores for over two years. We spent nearly two hundred million dollars, not counting pensions, when two per cent of that sum with a small well-trained force would have sufficed. And above all we sacrificed six thousand lives in camp and on the battlefield, when that figure should not have been over two hundred. As far as might, efficiency, planning and management were concerned, we muddled this war on land to the tune of death and shame. Again we couldn’t defend our country against our enemies and had to thank God for European weariness from Napoleon, which called off the British. That’s the reason why, when our raw material is finer and greater than anywhere else in the world, the soldier is so wrought up over our people rushing into future extravagance, unnecessary slaughter and possible defeat. For somehow war has a habit of sneaking up on us craftily and quickly, like a thug.

_VI_

THE UPHILL GAME

How about giving our imaginations a little exercise for a minute before we start in on the evening’s story. Are we set for the effort? Well, here’s the picture. Just suppose a great plague of flu were to sweep this country from end to end. And suppose there were not a single doctor or nurse in the United States. Now suppose that Congress, all excited, voted great numbers of doctors and nurses to stem the scourge. Well, how many people would die, and how much neglect and horror would visit our doorways, while the doctors and nurses were being trained and educated? Just go over in your mind that little chaos and you have almost a view of the War of 1812--almost--for then we went this fancied epidemic one better. We didn’t provide training and education at all for the doctors and nurses--the officers and men of that calamity. The plague of war just went along from bad to worse--and then from worse to awful. There was much excuse for our slips before and during the Revolution, when we were a loose lot of colonies and were divided into Whigs and Tories. But by 1812 we had been a nation for over twenty years. Few realized then, and some don’t now, that the soldier needs just as much preparation and education as the doctor and the nurse. For preparedness against war and shortening a war amount to a vast science and art which cannot be trusted to quacks without undue loss of life to our sons. After our narrow escape from this plague of 1812, when our enemy providentially was called back to Europe, we didn’t do away with our preventive medicine, as we did after the Revolution. No sir, we kept that training for three whole months. Then we reduced it to ten thousand men on paper. Five years later, in the face of protests by such men as John C. Calhoun, we cut it to six thousand men. Then the Seminoles, Creeks and Black Hawk promptly entered into the gentle art of taking scalps. Settlers were slain. Dade’s Command of one hundred seven officers and men marching on a peaceful errand were massacred. Other officers and civilians were mowed down. Cholera attacked the troops against Black Hawk, and yellow fever took its toll of those against the Seminoles. In the Florida, Georgia and Alabama country a force of less than a thousand trained troops tried to keep safe a vast unexplored country against three thousand Indians. By 1834, for the whole of the United States, less than four thousand troops attempted to guard over ten thousand miles of seacoast and frontier for fifteen million people. Two years later, after these killings had been going on for some time, our legislators with frenzied haste voted our army to be raised back to ten thousand. But the troops could not be had or trained in time. So the slaughter went on. Mr. Hearst quotes Alfred Henry Lewis as saying that a Congressman is like a man riding backwards in a train. He never sees anything till after it has passed. Well, that may be a little unfair to our legislators, but it surely applied to these enactments. For what happened afterwards? The usual waste and ineffectiveness. General after general on the frontier asked to be relieved of command because of the impossibility of the task, the smallness of the force and the wholesale, needless deaths. Of the trained men in this Seminole War over forty-one per cent perished--nearly half of all the troops--and to little purpose. One hundred seventeen of our best officers, in one year, seeing the fruitlessness of their services resigned from the army rather than to be a party to stagnation. Among them were such prominent men as Horace Bliss, W. C. Young, R. R. Parrott, Alexander D. Bache, Albert Sydney Johnston, N. B. Buford, Leonidas Polk, Jefferson Davis, Joseph E. Johnston and George G. Meade. By 1842 the army in the face of the want of a strong national police force was reduced to eighty-six hundred and thirteen men. A Congressman on the floor of the house stated in that year: “We have no prospects of war. We have more reason to suppose that the world will grow wiser and that the humane and oft-repeated wish of the wise and good, that the sword and bayonet may be converted into the scythe and ploughshare, will be realized.” We have no prospects of war! Four years after this statement, came the War with Mexico like a bolt out of the red, white and blue. It found our seventeen million people with an army of fifty-three hundred men all told, or what would correspond for a university of seventeen hundred students to a football squad of six men. Six whole men. Think of that. A line, all but one man, no backs and no substitutes. Of course, you couldn’t play the game at all, under those circumstances. Well, as the Mexican War was in sight General Zachary Taylor had to. He had to fight with less than that. He had just three thousand troops against a possible fifty thousand Mexicans. Even so, his command was the largest regular force we had assembled since the Revolution. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this war were, Taylor was in a perilous position. When hostilities came, he had to go forward with his little band of trained soldiers. Against superior forces he won the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. Then he was held up. Untrained volunteers poured in upon him too late--right in the midst of campaign--just as applicants for a medical school might rush in and clog up a busy hospital. Imagine that situation, hundreds of novices running around the corridors and into the wards of a big hospital. Would the doctors be crazy? Taylor’s position was worse. The government had forced him to keep these men in his institution and many of them hadn’t the inclination to learn, many had come out for a lark, and all of them had to be taught from the ground up obedience, punctiliousness, cleanliness and the technique and character of the soldier if they weren’t going to _run_ or be uselessly _killed in battle_. It took four months’ waiting and preparing in a hostile country before Taylor could go into his next engagement. Besides he couldn’t get enough transportation. But he had one big advantage over leaders in 1812 and the Revolution. West Point was beginning to account for itself--not because it was West Point, nor because I would emphasize the United States Military Academy unduly, but because it was the only place in the Western Hemisphere _then_ where a man could get four years’ training and education toward being a doctor for the plague of war. Five hundred West Pointers--the Grants and Stonewall Jacksons as lieutenants and captains, made things easier for Taylor, and other West Pointers, like Jefferson Davis, were coming back to the colors with the volunteers. So Taylor, after his green men had been taught something, won the battle of Monterey. But these victories weren’t getting us anywhere. They were just scattered first downs. Taylor was much like the hen that pecks, but has nothing to cackle about. Over his advance into nowhere the administration was beginning to be nervous. He could scarcely have been called an educated soldier. On the contrary, Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the army in Washington, was professionally trained and self-educated to the point of brilliance. For a long time Scott had told Polk and Marcy, just what would end the war quickly--a strike at the very heart of Mexico--nothing less. But the powers wouldn’t listen to him, scoffed at him, called him visionary. The quacks were ridiculing the doctors. But when Taylor got nowhere more leisurely, the administration threw up its hands and chucked the whole affair into Scott’s lap, because the people were becoming restless for a solution. Yes, the President gave permission to Scott, but he had called Scott’s plan visionary, and therefore had to prove his point by taking a pot shot at Scott’s efforts when he could safely do so from executive cover. In spite of this double-crossing, Scott finally got enough troops at Vera Cruz to start shoving through to the finish. Meanwhile Taylor, who could scarcely have been accused of planning his battles with knowledge and decision, won Buena Vista. A number of trained subordinates, such as Wool and Jefferson Davis, together with seasoned troops were mainly responsible for the victory. But beyond drawing a large part of the Mexican Army away from Scott, it did not accomplish much toward ending the war. Scott had given it out that he was going to conquer a peace and he was determined to do so with all speed. By skill and energy he took Vera Cruz with only twenty losses to his troops. But then he was met with horrible obstacles. Polk had not kept his part of the bargain--to send the rest of the troops, transportation and supplies. Yellow fever would soon be attacking the forces in this low country. Scott pushed on toward the highlands anyhow with what he had. At Cerro Gordo he faced a natural stronghold in the mountains that was terrifying. With excellent scouting and planning, with the aid of able subordinates such as Robert E. Lee, he pushed through the scowling, fortified barrier and sent the Mexicans flying, pursuing them as far as he could.

But then came the rub. Jalapa. Have you ever heard of Jalapa? Well, it was another Valley Forge in our history, a Valley Forge in a hostile country far from home. There, seven regiments and two companies of Scott’s volunteers went home in a body because their enlistments expired. Over thirty-six hundred men left him, and nothing could stir their patriotism to remain. His force was reduced to less than seven thousand in the face of twenty thousand Mexicans. Also James K. Polk was continuing his undercutting work at home. Scott was being too successful and would be too strong politically. So money and recruits did not arrive. The troops were not only low in numbers, but in spirits, too. Scott pleaded in vain with the government for the life of his men and honor of our country to send him what he needed. Some of his troops were beginning to feel it was no use trying to go forward. It was all they could do to survive now in the center of Mexico. One of his generals advised going back. Would they have to give up? It was a desperate situation. But Scott meant to go forward. He began by winning over the hostile inhabitants through his kindly, square treatment. They grew to like him better than their own leader, Santa Anna. He kept his troops in hand and generally well-behaved. So he was finally able to barter with the inhabitants and get food for his men. He pushed on toward Puebla without the money and recruits promised him. Finally, after two months’ delay, fresh troops and money came. Even though he had only ten thousand seven hundred eighty-one effectives, mixed with green men, he went further onward immediately. Came the victories of Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, Chapultepec and Mexico City. The capital was taken and the war was over. In six months, trained troops, trained subordinates and a trained commander had marched through the heart of a hostile country, against vastly superior numbers of the enemy, against a bloodsucking administration at its back, and had conquered a peace, as Scott had said he would. Had his advice in the first place been heeded, the war, the sufferings, the deaths, and the expense could have been cut in less than a fourth. But again the value of training and education for a plague had been flouted. Yet training and training alone had won for us our first successful war on land. And from it came a third of the present area of the United States, which we weren’t loath to accept.

And the cause of our success? Well, we must be frank and honest. We must admit that the opposition wasn’t really first class. Had it been, dear knows what beatings our paltry number of trained troops would have taken. But the Mexicans were by no means as weak as we were in 1812. If they had been, we could have walked into the Mexican capital without much more than a loud booh. We mustn’t get the idea that the Mexicans couldn’t fight. They disputed the way so hotly at Contreras and Molino del Rey, that it looked for a time very doubtful for the United States. It was no afternoon’s parade such as the British had had into our capitol.

But our quality was superior and we could force our way through the opposition. Why? Well, Scott tells you, Scott, who was not a West Pointer. He said that had it not been for the graduates of the Academy, the war would have lasted four or five years, with more defeats than victories in the first part. At any rate, these young men proved to be a great foundation for efficient leadership. Specialized education and training whether or not by West Point had saved money and life in this war, despite untrained inpourings, despite a hampering administration, and despite our pitiful numbers.

But let us hark back to a piece of irony. In the previous years before this war, _twice had Congress tried to abolish West Point_, and _once_ it made no appropriations for it, so that the Superintendent at his own risk had to borrow $65,000 from a private individual to keep it going. What ugliness would have been added to our history, had the abolitionists been successful? What shame and slaughter would have come had the President _not_ been forced to let Scott carry out his plan? Is it to laugh or weep at the sentimentalists who would do away with the doctors and squander human life? Well, let’s see the Civil War next. Not so pretty--what?

_VII_

THE SCRAMBLE

At a game of bridge, a player once tried to excuse himself to his partner for trumping his ace, “But you see,” he said, “I’m just learning.” Said the partner, “That’s the devil of it--you’re _not_.” Just why our country didn’t learn after three wars, two of which we actually lost through the _absence_ of training, and one of which we won _because_ of training, is a mystery to more than good bridge players. Well, we didn’t learn, for right after the Mexican War, we reduced our trained force to the size it was shortly after our miserable War of 1812, thirty-six years before. And we made this astounding reduction, in the face of an increase in our population of twelve millions, and in our territory, of nearly a million square miles. The soldier was almost immediately put up against an impossible task. He was sprinkled about so thinly beyond the Mississippi that often he despaired of his own existence. A paltry seven thousand struggled against hundreds of thousands of Indians for the sake of the settler. Besides, the western land was familiar to the savage and strange to the soldier. The odds against this meager force were increased when gold was discovered in California, when the forty-niner came along. The soldier had to build forts, roads and trails--and escort the endless caravans of wagon trains over the prairie, if the settler was to arrive safely in our coast states. Meanwhile uprisings of Apaches, Yumas, Navajos, Cheyenne and the deadly Sioux had to be repulsed. Tardy increases of the trained force by Congress came far behind the heels of the unwarranted killings. By 1861 the entire army, trained only in small actions, numbered a little over fifteen thousand men. And eighty-four per cent of this force was scattered so completely and remotely from Washington, that it would have taken months to collect them. We sat through all this, like the man watching for weeks the flood approaching his house, and making no attempt to remove his furniture, or get a boat. We watched the skies grow darker and crooned, “It ain’t goin’ to rain no more.” For thirty years the North had been trying to black the South’s industrial eye, and the South had as vigorously defied the threats. Violent abolitionists, cartoonists, pamphleteers and novelists had been using hot words and making insulting gestures at each other. Yet the Yankee, doubling one fist and opening the other, kept saying, “O, no there won’t be a war. Brother couldn’t fight brother. Even if there is one, it can’t last.” When South Carolina seceded four months before the conflict, and six states followed her example, we did not wake up to the protection of our youth. When nearly one-fourth of the army, with its proportion of government property in Texas, was surrendered to the South, we did nothing to overcome the loss. When we saw the South call out one hundred thousand men for a year’s service, we sat like spectators on the bleachers. We let the Confederates seize the arsenals in their states and all the government property they wanted. We let them boldly inaugurate a rival republic within our borders, elect a president and declare their independence. Even then we made no effort to school and train our men so that they might have some chance. General Scott early begged Buchanan and Secretary of War Floyd to raise a small, efficient, trained force to stem possible trouble, but these men of state merely shrugged. Since Scott was too old to mount a horse, he was too old to give advice. After all he was only at the top of his profession, practically and theoretically. Our attitude was _not_ to be ready for possible emergencies, and particularly an emergency that had been slapping us in the face for over thirty years, but to do as wretchedly as we could when the emergency struck us. And we surely lived up to expectations. When the gun at Fort Sumter waked the sleeping North into action, we were destitute of anything like a proper tool to handle the situation. Even our new President because there were no trained troops in the East to protect him, had to make his way in disguise to a threatened White House; whereas President Davis, a trained, tried and educated soldier and statesman had collected thirty-five thousand troops, who were being trained and equipped. So when President Lincoln, unlettered and unskilled in the art and science of war arrived in office, he found the South had a magnificent start on him. From then on throughout the war he had to work against horrible handicaps, even though we had three times the man-power and many times the resources of the Confederates. In desperation he called out seventy-five thousand men for three months--seventy-five thousand raw men to do the work of veterans. In response to this call, a Massachusetts regiment was mobbed while passing through Baltimore and a Pennsylvania regiment had to turn back because it had no arms. Meanwhile nearly three hundred southern officers of the small, far-scattered trained army went over to the South.

Washington and other cities were deluged with a bewildered, undisciplined and poorly led and organized lot of fellows. Under little restraint they wandered aimlessly about, often unfed for weeks, quartered in muddy, filthy buildings, with ill-fitting and oftimes insufficient clothing and with little idea of their duties, conduct or responsibilities. The trained men were so few they couldn’t be found, and the government, unlike the able management in the South, made no effort to find them or use their services to the best advantage. Why, when U. S. Grant wrote to Washington offering himself for duty, he wasn’t even replied to. Naturally you can’t blame the rank and file, if there was an unwarranted lot of brawls and disturbances. Idleness and lack of discipline just means that. Public buildings were defaced. Even the Capitol itself suffered damage and abuse from a regiment quartered in its halls and on the very floors of the Senate and House. The farmer colonel and the apothecary major stalked the streets in showy uniforms, drew their pay, and didn’t go near their commands for weeks. Not all of them. There were some very worthy ones, who strove under hindrances of little opportunity, to bring order out of their units. But they were the accidents in our country’s arrangements--or lack of them. In these first few months of grand hubbub, misfit and waste, the country had spent more money than would have supported an army of prevention during the preceding ten years. And what needless hardship and suffering it had brought to more than seventy-five thousand people.

But something had to be done. These three-month men would be going home soon and we’d have to begin all over. The people of the North, having had such a long sleep, demanded action. What matter if we did throw our poor men into a raging torrent before we taught them how to swim. On to Richmond! Those who had said there couldn’t be any war, were the loudest in screaming for a fight. On to Richmond! So McDowell became the scape-goat. He had to go. They gave him only thirty thousand men, but that was ten times more than any active officer in the regular army had ever had a chance to handle. They also gave him eight days in which to transform this excursion into an army. Eight days. It was a compliment to his magical powers. But the administration and the country were really serious about it. So he took them out to do battle. Fatigue, waste, meandering, sore feet, green apples, overdrinking and all those hundreds of vices, which the recruit learns to get over, appeared on the march--a march that allowed him to go the great distance of fifteen miles in two days. What else could have happened at Bull Run but what _did_ happen? Of course they’d run. It wasn’t their fault, nor had it anything to do with their bravery. It always will happen when untrained men meet a sudden reversal. Training and discipline are the equivalent of confidence, and these men hadn’t been allowed by their people to have any confidence. Some of them never stopped fleeing till they got to New York. Had it not been that there were a few trained regulars to stop the onrush of the Confederates, more men would have been uselessly slaughtered. This spectacle gave us less than _nothing_. So we proceeded to call out one _million_ men with more pandemonium, more ill-supplied concentrations, more sufferings and more expense.

Two weeks ago a listener to these talks, a total stranger to me, sent me an extract from a diary of a gentleman now living, a survivor of this war, one of those noblemen who at this period of the story volunteered to be met with unnecessary cruelty by his country. Here is some of the extract:

“In due time we arrived in Washington on a drizzly, sloppy evening and were marched to and housed in some large building already occupied by larger numbers than should have been there. We had no food, the place was dimly lighted with smoking torches. The floor was so muddy and foul that we could not lie down and no place for so doing being provided. We stood and shivered and said things and wondered if all heroes lived in such style as this.”

The diary goes on to show how this detachment wandered about unassigned to any organization, for days without food, and living in indescribable filth. That is a sample of what these hordes of fine men suddenly called out, suffered. The author of this diary is now ninety-one, one of the few left to tell the tale. Let me extend to him the admiration and gratitude of our army for his needless and heroic endurance and fortitude.

To go on with the story, during this haphazard condition the South was allowed to develop itself by its comparatively efficient methods, undisturbed by us. McClellan had now the task of building up the great part of these heterogeneous masses into something of an organization. The war had stopped to let us train. But had it? The terrific expense and useless deaths went on. In this first year thousands died of disease under new conditions of exposure and hardships. Meanwhile McClellan had to have time for his gigantic task. The people of the North began to be irritated. Why didn’t he do something? Why didn’t he go on to Richmond? He had plenty of men. The Yankee brain felt that numbers were a solution for anything. It little realized that the officers had to be taught the technique of the march, the camp, the battlefield, security, supply, guard, unit management, drill and staff work. The men had to be taught all sorts of movements, the use of their weapons, sentry duty and above all discipline. All this would have to be done now at this late date, if the North were going to have any success at all. So for nearly a year against the ignorant clamor of a nation, McClellan worked in schooling, and preparing a huge army that would not have been necessary, had Scott’s advice been heeded. And he turned out a well-knit machine ready for action--but just a year too late to save the great carnage. When finally a year after the war opened, the Peninsular Campaign was begun, the administration of novices in Washington held out troops from McClellan, heckled and hampered him and finally stopped him when he was beginning to get somewhere. Meanwhile the South was making consummate use of Robert E. Lee’s brains and leadership. Then came the empty victory of Antietam, and the defeats of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. It wasn’t until the middle of the third year of the war that we won our first decisive battle at Gettysburg. But why shouldn’t we at that late date? It was no glory to us. We had the man-power and money. It’s nothing to be particularly happy about as far as efficiency is concerned. It’s far better for us to grieve over the losses, the extravagant, ignorant, idle, silly, moronic losses--losses that could scarcely be attributed to men in their senses. I cannot make invectives too strong against my fellow Yankee, who murderously treated his fellow man by his inhuman dullness before the war. For in this conflict we fought the bloodiest war, man for man, in all our history, when by wisdom and foresight of ordinary business, we could have saved ninety to ninety-eight per cent of the deaths. By our late start, our failure to apply preventives in time, our unreasoning obtuseness in not listening to the experts, we had to call out nearly three million men. Of these we lost by battle over one hundred ten thousand men. But listen to this--by death from disease we threw away nearly a quarter of a million, and the main part of the awful sickness was in the first part of the war and among men utterly unfit for campaign. Among the trained men sickness was so rare that it wasn’t often reported. Besides this mortality, of the many fine souls and bodies of volunteers who with high motives came into the ranks, fought and escaped death, there were thousands who went back home stricken by the effects of the bullet, dysentery and fever for the rest of their lives.

_VIII_

MORE SCRAMBLE

Over my bed in college hung a drawing made by a member of the Class of 1837. (Not a classmate of mine.) It showed a college youth of the time, quite wabbly from too great association with John Barleycorn. He was pointing his brace of pistols at a monkey perched on the foot of his bed. Underneath the picture were the words: “If you’re a _monkey_, you’re in a devilish fix. If you’re _not_ a monkey, _I’m_ in a devilish fix.” Just whether or not it was a real monkey I never knew, but there was no mistaking the fix. The more closely we study the Civil War, the more we find that we were in a _terrible_ fix. And the more we get away from it, the more we hate to look the fix in the face, especially because the fix was our own fault. Today the World War is so close to us that it screens the errors and calamities of our Civil War. We forget too often that in the early sixties we endured the most awful catastrophe this country has ever seen--a thing far more bloody man for man than what we went through in the World War. But maybe it’s a healthy thing to look at our Civil fix now, as the doctor studies past epidemics in order to prevent future horrors to mankind. A picture of the year before that war is full of so many fixes--so many pieces of indulgence in artificial stimulation and neglect that they’d fill a book. But here are two. In 1860 just before we were rushed into the struggle, a bill was introduced into Congress to abolish the Navy, on the ground that we’d never have any more war. Fortunately it failed of passage. But the only legislation for the army that year was the appointment of a committee to look into West Point and an authorization to increase the sugar and coffee ration of the soldier. And all this, while the tension between the North and South was about to snap. A school and a drink, while blood and flame were in sight. And there was no fire department to quench the raging blaze. A hose in Oregon, a nozzle in Florida, horses in Arizona and an engine nowhere! And suddenly Sumter’s guns cracked out and set the nation on fire. We began to seethe and mill around. The President was caught in the furor and had to exercise his war powers. Later when Congress met, it made the entire set-up for the war in less than four weeks. Less than four weeks! Why you couldn’t do that with a new factory, much less a police department. And here we were with a massive business undertaking that meant life and death to the whole country. Of course, the legislation teemed with mistakes, which we paid for extravagantly and are still paying for. The men called out weren’t soldiers any more than they could be lawyers, managers and operators without practice and education.

The thirty thousand collected for Bull Run were, in the mind of the North, going to march right through to New Orleans. And people came out from nearby towns to watch, from a very safe distance, the battle--congressmen in carriages, women in barouches, sutlers in wagons and reporters in tree-tops. They would behold this battle that was going to bag these rebels and drive them into the Gulf of Mexico. The spectators having comfortable and uncomfortable seats, the engagement after some delay started. Tyler was slow in getting into position and Hunter’s brigade rested for refreshments by the waters of Bull Run a bit too long. After a time the Southern masked batteries began to have their telling effect. Lines were formed slowly and badly under fire. Many did not know the use of their muskets. Those in the rear were almost as deadly to friend as foe. Too many officers were killed or wounded in trying to get their men forward. The green troops finally mistook a regiment of Confederates for their own and received a murderous fire. Then the rout began. One regiment fled and then another. The untrained men stampeded across the field toward Washington. The eager observers scaled down the trees faster than they had climbed them. Barouches, carriages and wagons wheeled about and clattered away with much dust, turmoil and crowding. A vehicle overturned and blocked the main road, adding to the panic. The retreating recruits in their excitement fired mostly into the air, fortunately for those about them. Some officers sought to rally their men, here and there, but in vain. The majority rushed across fields, over lanes and pushed through jammed roads in their hurry to get away. And thus the first northern force evaporated.

Haste, haste everywhere. Haste in forming a force--haste in legislation--haste in getting away. Men who would otherwise have been staunch and vigorous--men who were naturally brave--were hurried into a life-and-death-position they had no chance to fill. The size of the two forces had been about equal, but the South had had the advantage of six months’ training, whereas the North had used mostly eight-day wonders. And this decided jump of the Confederacy on us--their planning--their foresight--their business arrangements had meant the turn of the tide against the Union.

And it was so all through 1861. We had five other battles in that year, all of which we lost in the same way and for the same cause, except one. Drainesville--have you ever heard of it? That was all we had to show for the whole year’s effort--a tiny battle having no influence on cutting the war shorter. And in that time we had killed and wounded three thousand three hundred seventy-one men and spent four hundred nineteen million dollars--all to no purpose--sheer waste. In fact worse than waste, because the setbacks had paralyzed our efforts. Then came the mismanagement of the second and part of the third year of the war. While the Union was organizing as a loose Confederacy, the Confederacy was organizing as a close Union. The southern government keenly abandoned states’ rights for their army shortly after they had begun to fight for states’ rights as a national policy. The northern government inanely took up states’ rights for their army immediately after they had begun to fight against states’ rights as a national possibility. Both were inconsistent, but the South was inconsistent wisely. It did away with voluntary enlistments and the power of independent states to appoint officers and to offer whole units--and vested the control in its President. It made a unified army. It then enacted the first proper draft law in any English-speaking country--a thing which was afterwards the greatest single stroke of efficiency for America in the World War. On the other hand, the Union persisted in lopsided volunteering and gave away to the governors absolute authority to create organizations and appoint the officers over them. And Mr. Lincoln had to receive these irregular lots and do the best he could with them. He was powerless at the head of this great organization to have control over the selection of his employees. And the way they were selected didn’t help much either. Political favorites, farmers, clerks, ward bosses and men about town, were given command of regiments and battalions, when they knew nothing about the technique, tactics or art of their undertaking--nothing about the real business of their jobs. Professional qualifications had little to do with their selection. Influence, popularity, deference, obligation and even pity put them in their positions. Why, one officer was elected a captain of a company because he had the most children and needed the money. Others were made colonels or majors for just as sensible reasons, while three hundred and eight trained officers were overlooked and kept in small positions throughout the war. Would we put plumbers or carpenters over our sick in the hospital? We did worse. We put them over well men, fine bodies, whose lives depended upon knowledge and experience against the awful things they had to face. For the camp and bivouac are even more deadly than the battlefield under untrained leaders. In more ways than one our hurried management caused the lengthening of the horror into four long years of unnecessary slaughter.

At the top, the North had a President and Secretary of War, distinguished members of the bar, but utterly unfamiliar with the technique and art of ending a war as quickly as possible. The country’s policies had placed them in this unfair position. There was no active general-in-chief of the armies. The Secretary of the Treasury was given the task of making an organization plan. Other members of the cabinet and bureau chiefs were given similar military problems. A group called the Second Aulic Council debated, fussed and mostly collapsed into grand meddling. It was the old story of a large cumbersome committee getting nowhere--a committee that rarely understood the vital needs of the occasion. So it was not surprising that the most ineffective soldier with military education was finally chosen as General-in-Chief, General Halleck. And he added to the confusion. Generals in the field didn’t know where they stood. They were promised troops that never arrived and shorn of troops they had with them. Their plans, by mail, telegraph or personal travel had to be approved in Washington before they could proceed. Often the opportunity passed before the veto or approval arrived. During his campaigns, McClellan received hundreds of telegrams, letters and courier packets a week, counseling one thing and then another--and often contradictory. He could not change his base, make a new plan, operate in a new place or go enthusiastically forward without first having his proposals crunch through the slow grinding mill of Washington. Commanders grew to be more fearful of the District of Columbia than the enemy. For it’s hard to fight to your back and front at the same time. And your back happens to give you more creeps.

In a little over two years the main army of the East had in succession as commanders McDowell, McClellan, Pope, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker and Meade. In the whirlpool of mismanagement, heads fell fast. And subordinate generals notoriously feared most being placed in command of the Army of the Potomac. Certainly the whole fault couldn’t lie with six different commanders. With the same system--or lack of it--sixteen would probably have failed. Certainly _one_ could have been wisely selected who could have gone on, if properly backed up. The answer lies in the Confederacy. There, a single trained and experienced man picked a trained commander and placed him over better trained and organized troops than the North had. He was held on whether he won or lost and became more capable as he proceeded. This sample of management and organization, always a few steps ahead of the North is why the South held off the Union against odds of three to one for four staggering years. That is what was done while the Yankee was paying millions in bounties for recruits, uselessly wasting his men, undergoing draft riots and enduring one of the ablest _mis_managements our country has seen. The lack of any action before the war--any wakefulness from our deep sleep--any use of ordinary sense plunged us into the waste of wastes and told the world ever since that we were the incompetent of incompetents. And for all this the North paid nearly ten billion dollars. And how we spent lives. Why, we were in such a rush at the beginning that we sent in three hundred thousand men without even examining them physically. Think of what that meant in mortality. We fed our manhood like babes into the burning cauldron of Moloch, all because we sat and waited with no idea of a preventive in those years and months before the war. Experts, foreign and domestic, agree that if we had had a trained force in the East in December 1860, of not more than twenty-five thousand, the war could not have lasted over three months, with a maximum of a thousand casualties. As it was in the North alone we threw away three hundred sixty thousand lives. With the South counted we filled prodigally way over a half million graves. No, we don’t care to snuff things out at the source. We prefer to dam them at the mouth. We do that with crime. Why not do it with war?

_IX_

FIDDLING