Chapter XI: Part 11

This Organization and Administration for the British Army was developed during the four of five centuries preceding our Revolution, for the purpose of maintaining the alleged God-given right of dynasties to rule the people without "The consent of the governed," to support large royal families, a large line of nobility with attendant trains, entailed estates, a numerous line of army officers--the latter supplanting the knights errant--who together constituted the ruling classes, distinguished from tradespeople and toilers as were the patricians of Rome from plebeians.

Earlier the armies were raised by the knights and barons; the officers from sons of the nobility who were admitted to the pomp and circumstance of regal courts; the men from the lowest class (often foreign mercenaries) hardly any of whom could read, or had any conception of individual, much less political rights, just emerging from barbarism and trained for wars where plunder was the main incentive to courage in battle.

These were men to be governed by fear alone, and not by the love of order and personal interest in its maintenance as Americans now govern themselves. With such people, rigid personal government and rules of discipline were necessary and accepted; with Americans, they are not only unnecessary, but abhorrent.

To comport, then, with the surroundings in the ruling classes and with the necessity for discipline among men so base in mercenary wars for the benefit of the ruling classes alone, the Organization and Administration were made to consist of two classes--officers and men--as widely separated as master and slave; the officer became by laws, written and unwritten, despotic and supercilious, with power even to take life without responsibility; the man servile and blindly obedient in the most abject sense, without remedies against his cruel wrongs.

It is true that at the time of our Revolution popular liberty had greatly advanced in England, but as the pay of the men was very small and the most of the service required in distant colonies, many of which were barbarous, and few equally advanced with England in civil liberties, few but the idle and vicious could be induced to surrender the rights then dawning upon them at home, and separate themselves for years from civilization, friends, and kindred; so, of necessity still, the unwritten laws were maintained, and those written did not keep abreast with those pertaining to civil liberties at home. To the officer, though a stripling, the soldier, though aged and battle-scarred, was always "My man," and he, in servile response, considered it a privilege if not an honor to black his master's boots. He was made to spend much time in acquiring a knowledge of the proper dress, manner, and deportment necessary to approach the presence of any one holding a commission. All this we inherited--much is unnecessarily perpetuated.

Until recently a similar unfortunate condition has confronted our army since its organization, in the fact that nine-tenths of it was compelled to abandon civilized association, going to the wilds to war with the North American savage, more dreadful than any with which the British Army has had to contend; only the poorest material could be induced to enlist, and the officers had at least a partial justification in maintaining the written and unwritten laws inherited from the British Army. But the cessation of these wars--now never to be resumed--and the transfer of the greater part of the army to the East, near the great cities, bringing both men and officers in contact with the people of the greatest civilization and also in direct association with the National Guards of States, who are directly from and with the people, has, within the last ten years, induced a great change in material of the enlisted men, so that now there can be no just reason why they should not be placed on a level as to pay, government, and promotion with other public employees in similar service, such as letter-carriers, city policemen, and others.

Right here it should be said, however, that the faults do not lie with the officers; as a rule they are blameless in these matters, as it is their sworn duty to maintain the unwritten laws, the customs of the service as they find them--which they have done, often knowing themselves to be the sufferers in alienation from the sympathies of the volunteers and the people in our greater wars--and at times impairing their usefulness for larger commands, by prejudices thus engendered. The material in officers is as good as any in the world, but there is little incentive to ambitious effort. The too certain tenure of office and the legal right to promotion by seniority are destructive of individuality and self-reliance (the distinctive characteristics of the American people) and subversive of ambitious efforts in time of peace, and in another decade the Army will degenerate into that state of imbecility and helplessness in which the great emergency of the Rebellion of 1861 found it. Neither is it the fault of the enlisted men.

Nothing, however, in our Republic, is so un-American as the great gulf that is maintained by laws, written and unwritten, between the commissioned and non-commissioned; a similar unfortunate gulf has also heretofore separated the Regular Peace Establishment from the Militia. Neither was intended by the Constitution nor its framers. The fault lies with the legislators, who should have perceived that our Government, founded on principles the reverse of those cited above, without classes, save as graded by worth, required an essentially different organization and administration, and they should have provided it, but they did not and have not to this day. They have practically kept up a small Army, generally qualified, however, by declaring the purposes temporary, but never seriously attempting a remodeling of its organization and administration, as was done in all other branches of the Government. They had suffered so much from the British soldier in Colonial times and had been able to vanquish him in battle with their citizen soldiery on such memorable occasions as "Saratoga" and "Yorktown" that they had contempt and hatred for anything in his semblance, and afterwards probably feared a permanent organization as menacing to the liberties they had wrested with such great sacrifice from its like, and repudiated it in spirit.

There are, however, two other alleged reasons which may have had a leading part in preventing politicians and statesmen from entering upon the necessary legislation. The first is the hazard or imagined peril to the safety of the Republic from "The Man on Horseback," a military leader placed officially at the head of a large body of well organized troops. This might be briefly answered with the truthful statement that at least two such men--Washington and Grant, and perhaps a third, Jackson--have had it clearly within their power to become dictators, and that the Republic as long as it survives will always regard them as the very safest of the many custodians of its liberties, while other leaders in the forum have attempted in vain their destruction.

The second is the great and lapsing question of "State's Rights," which at first had much force and reason, but is now fast losing all possibility of maintenance, and must eventually give way to the changed conditions and the much greater mutual interests of the States involved.

This doctrine had much right and reason in the earlier days of the Republic, because the States then, by reason of the comparative non-migration of their citizens and the transportation of products and commodities from one to the other, and the distinct characteristics of their people in habits and customs of business, might almost be said to differ from each other as did the baronies of Scotland in the Middle Ages, and required almost as autonomous laws for their government. But gradually their wonderfully increased population, the unparalleled advances in steam transportation, the great multiplication of their products and commodities (in one part or another of the Republic almost everything useful being produced) have so stimulated travel and commerce that they have so far lost their original individuality, that the individual citizen of each State in his daily wants and affairs, is quite as much interested in the laws, customs and business of other States, as in those of his own. Judging by the past, within the next half century the Republic will contain over 200,000,000 people and scores of cities of over a million inhabitants; greater and broader-tracked railroads with easier grades and curves and swifter speed, interchanging swiftly and cheaply the commodities of Florida with Alaska, and California with Maine; great ocean ship-canals with single locks connecting the Great Lakes with the ocean via the Hudson and Mississippi rivers.

The humblest citizen of the Republic will then have a daily interest in the protection of these great properties and the lives of the men who maintain them in operation, which can only be accomplished by a strong, united and well-sustained Federal force supported by the States.

The Regular Army is now smaller in proportion to the population and wealth of the nation than it has ever been at any period since the organization of the Government; the number of the lawless, the facility for their organization, armament and concentration has on the other hand largely increased, with greater power to do harm by reason of the newly invented destructive and terrible explosives.

An organization and administration after the skeleton plan which is briefly outlined below would modify much that is evil and bring the military in harmony with the other democratic institutions of the Republic:

PROJECT FOR A PERMANENT MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT FOR THE UNITED
STATES

1. That the permanent Line of the Regular Army shall consist of
one company for each district represented in the lower House
of Congress, and one company for each Senator in the upper
House, to be organized into regiments and corps as nearly as
practicable as now authorized by law. Companies may be expanded
to double their strength in time of war, at the discretion of
the President.

2. That the permanent Line of the Militia of the United States
(in the several States) shall consist of one regiment for each
district represented in the lower House of Congress, and one
regiment for each Senator in the upper House, a company of the
Regular Army, when requested of the President by the Governor of
the State, to be one of the companies of the Militia regiment,
the captain its lieutenant colonel, the second lieutenant
its adjutant, and the first sergeant its sergeant major; the
regiment to be otherwise organized, armed and equipped as the
Regular regiment to which the Regular company belongs. In the
assignment of the Regular companies to these Militia regiments,
to avoid sectional prejudices as far as practicable, but one
company of any regiment shall be assigned to any one State.

3. That whenever there may be money appropriated for that
purpose by Congress, the President may, at the request
of the Governor, order the Regular company to join its
Militia regiment, and report to the Governor, for mutual
familiarization, instruction, and discipline, under his command
for a period not exceeding two months annually.

4. That upon application by the Governor, the President may
order the Regular company to join its Militia regiment, for the
suppression of riots and insurrections within his State, under
his command, and the President may upon proper application call
the Militia regiment "into the actual service of the United
States," with or without its Regular company, to "execute the
Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrection, or repel Invasion"
within or without the State to which it belongs.

5. That on request of the Governor, on the recommendation of
a board of officers of the Militia regiment, the President
may order a lieutenant of the Militia regiment to duty with
its Regular company, for a period not exceeding two years, to
receive, after taking the oath, the rank, pay and allowances
of his grade in the Army, during his service for that period;
_Provided_, That but one officer in the regiment is so assigned,
at the same time, and that while so assigned, one of the
lieutenants of the Regular company may, on the application of
the Governor, be assigned to duty with its Militia regiment, by
the President.

6. That it shall hereafter be the duty of Regular officers
detailed to inspect Militia regiments to report the four
officers in each regiment who are, in their judgment, best
qualified for court-martial duty, and thereafter they may
be detailed on courts for the trial of Regular officers; no
court, however, to have over twenty per cent of its members of
such Militia officers so recommended; the Militia officers so
detailed to have the rank, pay, and emoluments of their grade in
the Army while serving on such detail.

7. That it shall hereafter be the duty of colonels of regiments
of the Regular Army to report annually six of the sergeants of
their respective regiments in their judgment best qualified
for service on courts martial, and that thereafter they may be
detailed on courts martial convened for the trial of enlisted
men of the Regular Army; no court, however, to have over twenty
per cent of its members of such sergeants so recommended.

8. That hereafter the finding and sentence of courts martial
shall be publicly announced, in open court, to the accused,
immediately after its determination.

9. That it be the duty hereafter of the committees on Military
Affairs in both the Senate and House of Representatives, to send
a sub-committee, the Chairman of the Senate sub-committee to
have, during this duty, the temporary rank of Major General, and
that of the House Brigadier General, and each sub-committee to
have an officer of the Inspector General's Department for its
Recorder, to visit and inspect, as far as practicable during
the recess of each session of Congress, the principal points of
interest, both in the Regular Army and the Militia, and submit
their reports with recommendations--the Senate Committee through
the Senate to the President for his information, and the House
Committee to the Speaker for the information of the House.

10. That hereafter there shall be ordered before examining
boards for examination for commissions as second lieutenants in
the Regular Army, a number of enlisted men then having served
at least two years (if there be so many applicants), equal to
one-half the vacancies created in the Army during the preceding
year, and if they pass the required physical, mental, and moral
qualifications, they shall be commissioned; the other half of
the annual vacancies to be filled from the graduates of the
Military Academy.

11. That in each Congressional District where a Militia
regiment may be organized, the cadet to the Military Academy
from that District shall be selected from the members of the
regiment including the Regular company, within the prescribed
age, who have served in it at least one year, at a competitive
examination, of all who choose to enter, by a board of officers
of the regiment, convened for that purpose by the Governor.

12. That hereafter each alternate vacancy in each grade of each
Regular regiment shall be filled by competitive examinations of
such officers in the next grade below as may choose to enter the
lists; the examinations to be made annually during the months of
June and July at such places as it may be practicable to convene
summer encampments of at least a brigade, embracing all arms of
the service, and that (in addition to the present methods) each
candidate be required to handle tactically company, battalion,
and brigade in presence of the board, and, if a foot officer,
to march with his proper command (using for a reasonable part
of the distance each of the prescribed gaits) a distance of
fifteen miles in six hours, each day, for three consecutive
days; if a mounted officer, the distance to be twenty miles;
the examination to include field officers. The judgment of such
boards to be final and determinate in each case.

13. That the monthly pay of the enlisted men of the Line of the
Regular Army shall hereafter be as follows:

Regimental Sergeant Major and Quartermaster Sergeant, $90, less
the actual cost of his subsistence and clothing.
First Sergeant, $75, less the actual cost of subsistence and
clothing.
Sergeant, $50, less the actual cost of subsistence and clothing.
Corporal, $40, less the actual cost of subsistence and clothing.
Private, $30, less the actual cost of subsistence and clothing.
Wagoner, Artificer, Blacksmith, and Saddler, the pay of Corporal.

As the aggregate number of Senators and Representatives is 447, this project would create that many regiments of Militia (or National Guardsmen) which, allowing for the increased number of companies in Artillery and Infantry, would constitute an Army on a war footing of about 500,000 men; an added third battalion would increase it to 750,000, and then again if the number of enlisted men in each company in time of war was increased to, say, 200 men, would give us an Army of 1,500,000 men (all that the country is likely to need under any emergency) which would quickly blend and assimilate, Regulars and Volunteers, in one harmonious whole.

The present pay of the officer is ample but none too great, while the pay of the men is too niggardly to entice any one into any kind of employment in this country, save the unfortunate or the idle and vicious, seeking temporary relief from suffering for food, shelter and raiment.

The number and monthly pay on first entrance in the different grades (omitting musicians, artificers, etc.) of the Line of the Army, are as follows:

40 Colonels $291.67
40 Lieutenant Colonels 250.00
70 Majors 208.33
430 Captains Foot, $150.00 Mounted 166.67
530 First Lieutenants " 125.00 " 133.33
430 Second Lieutenants " 116.67 " 125.00

Mark here the great gulf between officers and men in the gradation of pay, uniformity above and uniformity below:

Pay Rations Clothing
40 Sergeant Majors $23 $4.00 $3.83 Total, $30.83
430 First Sergeants 25 4.00 3.81 " 32.81
1,860 Sergeants 18 4.00 3.73 " 25.73
1,720 Corporals 15 4.00 3.71 " 22.71
17,264 Privates 13 4.00 3.34 " 20.34

Perhaps the police of our great cities, in the character of duties and the ends to be accomplished, bear a greater resemblance to the Army than any one other public organization in the country, and it may not be unfair to compare their pay, organization and administration (in the 454 largest cities there are about 36,000 policemen). The following represents the grades, numbers, salaries, etc., in the three representative cities of the Republic, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, omitting surgeons, detectives, clerks, etc.:

NEW YORK

Number Grade Monthly Salary
1 Superintendent $500.00
1 Chief Inspector 416.66
3 Inspectors 291.66
35 Captains 229.66
197 Sergeants 166.66
166 Roundsmen 108.33
2,548 Patrolmen--First Grade 100.00
287 Patrolmen--Second Grade 91.66
251 Patrolmen--Third Grade 83.33

CHICAGO

1 Superintendent $416.66
2 Assistant Superintendents 250.00
5 Inspectors 233.33
14 Captains 187.91
35 Lieutenants 125.00
55 Patrol Sergeants 100.00
1,738 Patrolmen--First Class 83.33
525 Patrolmen--Second Class 60.00

SAN FRANCISCO

1 Chief of Police $333.33
5 Captains 150.00
38 Sergeants 125.00
336 Patrolmen 102.00

Mark the uniformity in gradation of pay throughout! Their average hours of duty are nine. The only articles they furnish themselves which the soldier does not are quarters, subsistence, clothing, and equipments. The average cost of clothing and equipments per month in New York is $5.42. San Francisco has a retired list on half pay after twenty years' service at sixty years of age.

In 1891 there were employed in the Post Office Department in the 454 largest cities in the United States, 10,443 letter-carriers (nearly half the number of enlisted men in the Army) with monthly pay as follows: 1st class, $83.33; 2d class, $66.66; 3d class, $50.00; the average monthly pay being $73.00 per month, or a total annual pay of $9,161,137.00, nearly one-third more than the total pay and allowances of the 25,000 enlisted men in the Army.

On the breaking out of the Civil War in the early part of 1861, there were borne on the rolls of the Regular Army 1,083 commissioned officers and 15,367 enlisted men. These officers and men had been maintained by the Government, under the long existing organization and administration before referred to, for the main purpose of preparing them for the emergency that was then suddenly thrust upon them, as a nucleus for the large army then organizing.

Let us see how well they were prepared for that serious business: 282 of the officers abandoned their flag, leaving 801, with almost the full number of enlisted men remaining loyal. These, under a proper organization and administration, should have completely officered, with abundance to spare, the entire 2,000 volunteer regiments called into the Federal Army, but when they came in contact with them, there arose great distrust and want of confidence, the volunteers alleging that the Regular Officer was supercilious and determined to enforce upon them discipline which they deemed degrading and dishonorable. On the contrary, the Regular Officers asserted that the volunteers were ignorant, insubordinate, and unappreciative of the great trials that were set before them, and it came to pass that by long isolation on the plains and martinetism the Regular Army had become so alienated from the sympathies and confidence of the people that even as late as April 1, 1863, but 112 of the 801 had attained the rank of General, and comparatively few of these were successful. On the contrary, there were some 175 officers who had ceased to belong to the Army--most of them having discarded it, but some having been discarded by it--who had for years mingled with the people, becoming known to them and in sympathy with them. Of these, 45 had become general officers by the same date, and a remarkable proportion of them successful ones. But here again comes the remarkably instructive fact that for 23 years after the retirement of General Scott in November, 1861, the Army was commanded exclusively from this latter class--McClellan for 1 year, Halleck for 2 years, Grant for 5 years, and Sherman for 14 years; the only officers borne on the list of the Army at the breaking out of the war who succeeded to command it being Generals Sheridan and Schofield, and these latter not until long after the war had closed.

Then comes the additional instructive fact that of the 18 most distinguished Army and Corps commanders during the war, 12--Grant, Sherman, McClellan, Halleck, Fremont, Rosecrans, Hooker, Burnside, Meade, Dix, Curtis, and Slocum (two-thirds), came from the same class of ex-officers while only 6--Hancock, Thomas, Buell, Pope, McDowell, and Sheridan (one-third) were from continuous service in the Army.

The only plausible explanation that can be given for these remarkable facts is that after 5 or 10 years' service in the Army, in time of peace, under its present organization and administration, ambition, grasp, individuality, and self-reliance are dwarfed, as compared with the school of the ex-officer who enters the list of civil pursuits on the lines of "The survival of the fittest."

As to the 15,000 enlisted men above referred to, from whom such great service was reasonably expected, they--by reason of the great gulf that had been placed between them and their officers--had lost much of their self-reliance, and personal pride, and made small figure in this four years' terrible war.

To illustrate what unwise and unjust discriminations are brought about by our present Army organization, where the enlisted men have so little voice and influence, here is a possible case, an extreme one it is true, but possible--many of its incidents often occurring.

First Sergeant Jones, sixty years of age, has forty years' continuous service; receives for his services in pay and allowances $32.81 per month; his grandson, Smith, with no other merit than the personal preferment of his Congressman, at the age of sixteen receives his education and $45 per month for four years while at West Point, at the expiration of which time he joins his grandfather, who is now sixty-four, and assumes command of the company, his pay jumping to $125 per month, but his grandfather's remaining the same. If they should both be killed the next day in battle (see paragraphs 85 and 162, Army Regulations) Sergeant Jones, the grandfather, may be buried but at an expense not exceeding $15; Lieutenant Smith, the grandson, may be buried by the Government at an expense not exceeding $75.

If they should both be disabled by wounds or otherwise and retired, Jones, the grandfather, receives $27 per month, while Smith, the grandson, receives $93.75.

If Smith, the grandson, approaches a guard in command of his company under arms, the guard will turn out and salute. If Jones, the grandfather, in command of the same company under arms, approaches the same guard, neither the company nor its commander will be honored.

If both these officers are ordered from San Francisco to New York as witnesses before a court martial, and travel on the same train throughout the distance, the grandfather, Jones, receives the actual cost of his ticket and $7.50 only for commutation during the journey. Smith, the grandson, receives the actual cost of his ticket and $156.64 as mileage, etc.

If the Sergeant deserts en route, he is advertised with a reward; if apprehended, confined and tried as a felon. If the Lieutenant should do so (as some 24 have done since the Civil War), he would probably not be pursued, as none of the 24 referred to have been.

Article 66 of the Articles of War reads as follows:

"Soldiers charged with crimes shall be confined until tried by
court martial, or released by proper authority."

Any other authorities of the Government would interpret the word "crimes," as here used, to cover only acts known as felonies or threats of violence, where the danger to law and order was too great to allow the accused to run at large, yet for over a hundred years Army officers, under the unwritten laws handed down from the Middle Ages, have interpreted this word to embrace every trifling offense for which a soldier is triable by court martial, even neglects and omissions, such as "Failure to attend roll-call" and "Neglect to clean arms"; that the article was mandatory--that no soldier could be tried by court martial until first confined in the guard-house, and grave and serious courts have refused to enter upon the trial of such enlisted men unless previously confined. The disgrace of the accused and the presumption of guilt were at once established by the commencement of punishment, and in hundreds of cases prisoners were held for weeks on trivial charges awaiting courts for their trial, when the scarcity of officers and the remoteness of their stations rendered it impracticable to promptly convene them.

The Adjutant General of the Army, in his report to the General commanding for the year 1891, reports "From January, 1867, to June 30, 1891 (24½ years), the number of desertions from the Army was 88,475," over one-third the number that enlisted during that period; he estimates the loss to the Government by their desertion and the necessary enlistments to replace them at $23,003,500, and further states that during that period 16,000 deserters were apprehended or surrendered, and estimates the expense for rewards of apprehension, transportation, and trials by court martial of these 16,000 at $2,500,000, making an aggregate pecuniary loss to the Government by desertion for this period of $25,503,500, or an annual loss from deserters alone of over $1,000,000.

If the pay of the enlisted men be increased and uniformly graded down from the commissioned officers as proposed in the project for a permanent military establishment, it would increase the cost of the Army but a little over four million dollars per annum; thereafter it is fair to presume desertion would be almost as infrequent in the Army as it now is in the police of the large cities or the letter-carriers of the Federal Government. If so, this saving of one million per annum would repay one-fourth of this additional expense, but the betterment only begins here. A large percentage of the force of each garrison is constantly in the guard-house for other offenses than desertion. This, and their frequent trials by court martial (in some years aggregating almost the total number of enlisted men), it is fair to presume, would almost totally disappear, and there would be another great saving in the expense, and an equally valuable gain in the efficiency of the Army.

The project referred to would bring a large per cent of the younger officers constantly in contact with citizens and the National Guard, and they would thus soon become imbued with the spirit and desires of the people and gain their sympathy and confidence in the same degree that the ex-officers in civil pursuits have done before them.

On the other hand, the National Guard would soon learn to appreciate the excellence of Regular Army methods--which in the main are valuable--so that should another occasion occur for the nation again to organize a vast Army, Regulars and Volunteers would soon harmoniously unite.

During the four long years of sturdy war, in which was developed the grandest, most intelligent, patriotic and chivalrous army that ever trod the face of the earth, save perhaps that which it overcame but was too magnanimous to subjugate, the Regulars were compelled by force of intelligent reason to abandon more of their idiosyncrasies than the Volunteers were of theirs--courts martial and confinements were comparatively rarely known. The soldier, both in the Regulars and Volunteers, had attained an individuality and self-reliance not before known in our Army or that of any other nation. But on separation from contact with the Volunteers and people, by isolation in the West, the Regulars, under old methods of organization and administration, soon lapsed into former conditions. Without remedies, like emergencies will produce like results in the future.

At the beginning of the war, the War Department issued the following order:

"WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE,
"WASHINGTON, _November 20, 1861_.

"GENERAL ORDERS
NO. 101.

"The intention of the Government, in reserving the original
vacancies of Second Lieutenants for the most deserving among
the non-commissioned officers of the new regular regiments,
was twofold: to secure the services of brave, intelligent, and
energetic officers, by appointing only those who had fully
proved themselves to be such, after a fair competition with
all who chose to enter the lists against them, and to give to
the young men of the country--those especially who were poor,
unknown, and without any social or political influence--an equal
opportunity with the most favored. In General Orders No. 16, of
May 4, 1861, this intention was publicly announced. It is now
reaffirmed, and commanding officers of the new regiments will
see that it is carried out in good faith.

"By order,

"L. THOMAS,
"_Adjutant-General_."

Immediately the newly enlisted men of the Regulars became inspired with ambitious hope and self-reliance; promotion from the ranks was the rule, and the recipients of that period have ever since proved equal to those commissioned from other sources.

It may be said that the proposed change of giving one-half the vacancies to the enlisted men would be a hardship to the graduates of the Academy when there are now barely sufficient vacancies in the Army to give them all commissions, but it can hardly be considered a hardship to a young man favored with an appointment there and graduated free of expense to himself and family, when if thrown upon the world he would be better qualified than almost any of his fellows to fight the battle of life, and in case of war would prove, like the ex-officers before referred to, most valuable to this country. If it should be a hardship, it would be no greater than would befall the hundreds of enlisted men who under this project would doubtless qualify themselves quite as well for commissions as the graduates, and for whom, likewise, there would be an insufficiency of vacancies.

No one will assail the excellence of the Military Academy, though the present course there seems too severe in the higher mathematics and directed mostly to the production of engineer officers rather than officers for the command of men; for the former there should be an extended course, as in the military schools of other nations, but while admitting the excellence of this course for a portion of the officers of the Army, from long and varied contact with the people of almost every State and Territory, I know that he misjudges them seriously who thinks there is no other method equally good by which at least a portion of them can be supplied. No profession can maintain a healthy status where its members are derived solely from one source.

It ought to be understood by the law-makers in dealing with the Army, as it is in relation to every other service, public or private, that the Nation is but a joint stock company of seventy million holders, each with a certain amount of stock; that they require but 2,000 Army Officers; that commissions, as far as practicable, should be open to all competitors; that the best qualified may win on original entrance, promotion thereafter to be on lines of merit which can not be the case under present methods.

John Stuart Mill says:

"The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance
to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that
disposition to aim at something better than customary, which
is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty,
or that of progress or improvement. The spirit of improvement
is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing
improvements on an unwilling people; and the spirit of liberty,
in so far as it resists such attempts, may ally itself locally
and temporarily with the opponents of improvement; but the
only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty,
since by it there are as many possible independent centers of
improvement as there are individuals. The progressive principle,
however, in either shape, whether as the love of liberty or of
improvement, is antagonistic to the sway of custom, involving at
least emancipation from that yoke; and the contest between the
two constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind.
The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no
history, because the despotism of custom is complete."

For the reasons above, so clearly expressed, there is little hope for the reform before advocated to emanate successfully from the Army itself, which would be the greater beneficiary. Its officers have little power in political influence and it is to be regretted that the efforts they have made to use it have been principally directed to increasing their own number, rank, tenure of office and pay, or the establishing of such pernicious vested rights as "lineal promotion." That is to say, that Tom, who graduated in 1882, shall in no case be Captain before Dick, who graduated in 1881.

If any change for the betterment come, in this direction, the greater hope is with the National Guard of the States, who have not been so long hampered by imperious custom and who are more in contact with the legislative authorities. Eventually something in this direction must come about.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF THE ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND

SEPTEMBER 15, 1913

MR. PRESIDENT: We survivors of the Army of the Cumberland with our guests are met here on the semi-centennial of its greatest battle to do honor to the glorious achievements of its members, living and dead, in the most sanguinary and yet the most chivalrous war ever waged in all the tide of time; a war, too, that had more significance at the time it was waged, and has had since, and will continue to have for the betterment of mankind, than any other war of recorded history.

If, indeed, "it needs be that wars must come," it seems we should all be thankful to High Providence that it fell to our lot to participate in this war for the Union rather than any other of which we have knowledge, and, further, from our knowledge of the past history of mankind, we should be thankful that it fell to our lot to live in our generation, race, and country, with all its blood and tears.

In fact, we of our generation who are still alive have witnessed more and greater progress for betterment physically, mentally, and morally, than all that had gone before.

But to revert to our text, "The Army of the Cumberland," and the war itself. My theme is to inspire just but long-belated honors to the Confederate soldiers in arms.

The nucleus from which sprang the new race and nation of thirty millions of unmilitary and unwarlike Americans called suddenly to form the mighty hosts of over three million Confederate and Union warriors, was the Puritans and Cavaliers of Northern Europe, who for conscience's sake exiled themselves from religious, social and political persecution over two hundred years ago to the American wilderness where they hoped, untrammeled by the imperious custom of ages, to raise a new people self-reliant and of universal common interests where all should be schooled in the same ethics politically, socially and morally.

For over a hundred years they kept faith in their purpose in a self-reliant way never known before, being almost wholly self-supporting, having no public factories, each trade making and repairing its own tools and implements, each rural family raising its own flax, wool and cotton and almost universally spinning and weaving its own fabric for clothing. This brought the rearing of children to the mother's fireside, where the moral training of the mother is more pure, effective and lasting than all other methods, including schools and colleges.

They kept this faith until they had increased to a population of three millions of the most earnest, sturdy and conscientious people on the globe, when the principal mother country beginning insidiously to re-establish over them the very evils from which they had fled into exile, they again in 1776 engaged to free themselves, this time in a war for independence and government of their own. In this they succeeded, and by the time of the adoption of the Constitution in 1787 they had established a government more unique in all its leading characteristics than any known to history, its leading feature being that "all just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed."

This Constitution erased from existence all vestige or semblance of a personal and despotic government, such as titles of nobility, established church, primogeniture and entailment of estates, all of which had played so great a part in upholding the cruel and despotic governments of the great nations of civilization, and substituted in their stead a complicated yet symmetrical government with executive, legislative and judicial powers blending--both Federal and State--in one harmonious whole, which amazed the world and set it doubting whether such liberties could long endure.

For 74 years its creators kept the faith of their professions, continuing their Colonial simplicity, universal industry and frugality. In these 74 years the new nation had risen to a population of 30 millions as resourceful, self-reliant, contented and prosperous people as ever lived under one flag. Their labor-saving machinery and devices had led all the rest of the world, so that the genius of the ceaseless and tireless mental workers had by mechanical appliances and organized labor in large factories relieved man's brawn and muscle from perhaps 30 per cent of its arduous toil in the struggle for existence.

But meanwhile political fanatics and moral agitators began to set up strife between the sections North and South concerning an alleged discriminating tariff against the South on cotton goods, with threats of nullification, and later in the recriminating discussion against slavery and its extension and the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, until in the fifties a small portion of the people, mostly well meant but ill informed, had arrayed the political parties in great bitterness against each other.

So that in 1860 on the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency the Northern agitators claimed it as foretelling forceful abolition and those of the South claimed it foretold the destruction of the rights of the Southern States. Both these classes busied themselves in embittering the sections by raising armed companies of emigrants to the new Territory of Kansas, where they inaugurated a miniature civil war.

The Mayor of New York City called the City Council and proposed an ordinance declaring New York an independent city, which in the temporary frenzy of the time came near passing, giving encouragement to those very few in the South who contemplated secession. In Boston it was declared in public speech "The Union must be dissolved."

Then there was the mob's resistance to the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, the armed expedition to Harpers Ferry to incite the ignorant slaves to rise in domestic insurrection, and the declaration of a few fanatical orators that our flag represented "A covenant with death and a league with hell."

But in spite of all there were probably not ten per cent of the men North and South who afterward became soldiers for or against the Union who had any sympathy with the fanatical agitators on either side.

Mr. Lincoln had declared his purpose to "Maintain the Union, the Constitution and the laws, regardless of slavery," and in the border slave States--in fact, in all the slave States, public sentiment admitted that slavery was wrong, but as far as they were concerned an inherited wrong which they saw no practical way to remedy, as where slaves were held in large numbers they would be as helpless as children to care for themselves if freed.

In the border mountain States, however, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, where families held only a few slaves, their close environments enabled the slaves to acquire such individual character in habits of morality, industry and responsibility as would enable them to make a living for themselves and become comparatively good citizens, and in hundreds of such cases their masters manumitted them, and these manumitted men were setting an example to others and making an incentive which they had not had before. So that by this time if there had been no war or senseless fanatical interference, a great majority of the slaves would be free and would have become citizens well qualified for all duties, including the franchise, and those still in bondage, if any, would have been honestly striving to emulate the example set before them by the more progressive and competent.

I have said that we were fortunate in living in our day and generation, but we have many other things to be thankful for.

We should be thankful that we for the Union had for our leader from start to finish one whom we, his contemporaries, believe to have been the greatest of the human kind; one who spent his early life in loneliness, poverty and toil, and whose after lot fell to lead our mighty hosts; yet with these extreme vicissitudes he was always the same great, good and lovable spirit, "with malice toward none and charity for all."

We should be thankful, too, that our adversaries had for their leader perhaps the greatest man and patriot next to Lincoln in this greatest of wars of history. This is no disparagement to Grant, Jackson (Stonewall), Sherman or Johnston (J. E.), for Lee had the most difficult part: it is easier to be great when triumphant than to be great when vanquished. Lee showed his patriotism from the day of his surrender to the day of his death by becoming a humble, useful and law-abiding citizen, setting an example to many of his more turbulent countrymen that was of untold value in the rehabilitation of the Union as it is today; another and greater Cincinnatus because he had the moral force and patriotism to guide his millions of vanquished but unconquered followers back to the flag--to a loyal obedience and support of the laws of those who vanquished them--thus doing perhaps more than any other to bring about Whittier's beautifully expressed hope that

"The North and South together brought
Shall own the same electric thought,
In peace a common flag salute,
And side by side in labor's free
And unresentful rivalry,
Harvest the fields wherein they fought."

We should be thankful, too, that we had such valiant and chivalrous adversaries as the Confederate soldiers proved to be. Had they been craven or of evil purpose, as many political warriors claimed them to be, and we had more lightly overcome them, it would have been natural to try and subjugate and exploit them, and surely the sequel would have then been different. The Unionists in arms respected the Confederates in arms and vice versa, neither practiced the water cure nor any such kindred barbarisms; they were patriots all fighting heroically and chivalrously, each for what they believed the right as it had been given them to see the right.

And last but not least we should be thankful that the nation had those brave soldiers, Union and Confederate, of border States, the true Highlanders of America, of the Appalachian Range and west to Texas, men

"Who feared not to put it to the touch
And win or lose it all."

None fled their country to escape the draft, but boldly took up arms according to conviction, son against father, brother against brother.

In this connection I overheard soon after the war a dispute between two Congressmen from Indiana and Massachusetts as to which of their two States had furnished the greatest proportion of soldiers without draft. General Tom Crittenden, of the Regular Army, late a Major General in the Union Army, whose brother had been a Major General in the Confederate Army, sitting near, interposed, saying: "Gentlemen, you should be ashamed to admit that you submitted to any draft at all. Kentucky furnished her full quota to both sides without drafting."

Companions of the Army of the Cumberland, I have mentioned these incidents attending the beginning of the war for the Union, not for your enlightenment, for they are well known to you, but to lay the foundation for convincing our children and grandchildren who do not know: that the country at large does not yet appreciate the patriotism, chivalry, heroism and fortitude of the Confederate soldier.

It seems that we, while yet alive, should rise and testify to them of what we have seen and known, for we soldiers of the Union have had ample praise and honor to the ends of the earth: but they have been comparatively forsaken even by their selfish and perfidious professed friends in Europe who once encouraged them.

After Appomattox high officials in England who had first urged them to war, and the English press, which had encouraged it by constant agitation and misrepresentation, now turned against them in their adversity.

The London _Dispatch_ of June 10, 1865, used, among much else that was false, the following language:

"It was clear that a people who had not heart enough to destroy their property that they might defend their rights were neither fit to fight, nor worthy of any fate but that of submission to oppression, that they were not soldiers, that they were wholly unworthy of their cause, and that they were only fit subjects to tyranny."

To which the late Confederate General, Robert H. Anderson, of Georgia, replied in the public press, proving by statistics that the whole Confederate army had lost more in killed and wounded in four years' war than the entire British army of the whole British Empire had lost in the wars of the preceding one hundred years.

But here was a terrible war where the combatants on neither side had any purpose of conquest, subjugation or exploitation, and to our successors it is hard to explain how it came about. It may probably be better explained by the fable of the two knights traveling in opposite directions who met opposite a road sign painted black on one side and white on the other. After salutations the knight on the black side remarked the strangeness of painting a sign black, whereupon he on the other, ever ready to correct errors, informed his new acquaintance that the sign was not black, but white. After disputation they decided to settle the question by combat, so after jousting about for a while their positions became so changed that black was white and white was black, when each glancing at the sign, one said to the other: "What are we fighting about?" "Well, you said the sign was black." "Why, so I did, and it did look black to me then, but now I see that you were right and it is white."

And so with the Union and Confederate soldiers.

The die was cast for war by political and fanatical agitators, and millions of the best men in the world rose to arms, nearly one-half of them minors, ready to sacrifice their lives as patriots for what they believed their rights assailed and likely to be lost; but after jousting about for four long and bloody years they found that each was jousting for the same object; that the Confederates had formed their Confederacy, their Constitution and their laws almost identical with those of the Union.

Shortly after the war in a conversation with Mr. Lanham, a member of Congress from Texas and a warm personal friend, he told me in discussing our different parts in the war that his father and mother and neighbors taught him the war was a holy and righteous one; so that at the age of fourteen he enlisted, believing religiously in what he had been taught, until he came to a halt in Pickett's charge at Gettysburg and saw a Union soldier about his own age, a bright-faced boy who asked for water from his canteen. Asking how badly he was hurt, the boy replied:

"I am mortally wounded, but thank God I am dying in a good cause."

From that hour Lanham said he saw there were two sides to the question. He years afterwards told the same story from the floor of the House.

Incidents like this, but more than all Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, led the soldiers of both armies to the conclusion that all were fighting for the same end, which made it easier for the Appomattox surrender and the greatest fraternal reconciliation of which the world has history.

I have said that nine-tenths of the native Americans who afterwards became soldiers in the war had no part or interest in the crimination and recrimination that brought it about and only took part after the die was cast and war was on, and as this is even at this day a broad statement, it may not be immodest in me to relate some of my exceptional opportunities for forming this and other opinions stated in this address.

I was born in the border State of Indiana, partially educated at West Point, a citizen of another border State, Texas, for four years prior to the war. There I studied law under Colonel Waddell, a former member of Congress from Kentucky, then a district judge, and had charge of his plantation with thirty slaves while he was on his circuit court, and as a surveyor and engineer became fairly well acquainted with its people, who I know were satisfied and contented with the Union as it was. But when the die was cast and war was practically on I went to Washington, asked and was given a commission in the regular army, and had a sword made with this sentiment inscribed thereon:

"No abolition, no secession, no compromise, no reconstruction,
the Union as it was from Maine to Texas--Anson Mills, 1st
Lieutenant, 18th U. S. Infantry, May 14, 1861."

This sword I carried throughout the war and have it still in my possession.

I served in the field with my regiment for the full term of the war without sickness or on leave, and participated in all its battles, serving with the regular brigade, First Division, Fourteenth Army Corps, Army of the Cumberland.

To illustrate how easy it sometimes is for a small number of political agitators and fanatical reformers in any community or nation to compromise the whole to a policy farthest from the thoughts of nine out of ten, I will take my own State, Texas; the methods there used being more familiar to me, but in all other States that claimed to secede similar methods to circumvent the comparatively dormant wishes of the great majority were employed.

These fanatics and demagogues knew that Governor Houston would not call the Legislature in behalf of secession, and even if he did that the Legislature would not pass such an act, so they resorted to that cure-all now so popular with present-day fanatical reformers, the "initiative, referendum and recall."