Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 130.djvu/594

586 present almost insuperable difficulties, and these were once more met by the superior intelligence of the men on which the historian dwells so admiringly. The large number of three field-officers to each battalion, borrowed by the Americans from our organization, would have been superfluous in a Frenchman's judgment for a standing army, but is admitted to have been found of the greatest advantage here, in the many cases where either the colonel, the lieutenant-colonel, or the major took pains to show himself a willing learner as well as a teacher, and had a natural gift for command. Whichever it happened to be of the three fell naturally into the position of chief instructor to the battalion. The colonels, however, showed particular zeal in vying with each other in these exercises; and it was a common sight, after the day's drills were done, to see the officers assembled in their commander's tent to undergo a private course of instruction in the regulations to prepare for the work of the morrow. Much the same process of hard personal toil and study was carried out with the regimental account-keeping. But here the success was not so general as in the matter of drill; and the comte tells us that one must have been personally present at an inspection of some of these battalions, a duty that no doubt often fell on MacClellan's staff, to understand the miseries caused to some of the thousands of officers who were required as part of their duty to keep up regularly the books and returns prescribed by the regulations.

Gradually MacClellan's exertions bore fruit, and his ideas of making his command really mobile took practical substance. Order and discipline were fairly maintained; his staff was as efficient as its still modest numbers allowed; and regiments, brigades, and even divisions became units disposable for action at the need. One terrible flaw there remained that his powers could not mend, and as it lasted throughout the greater part of the war, and has never before been thoroughly exposed, it deserves special notice. Admirably as the American volunteer system served the special purpose of raising suddenly great bodies of men, it created no reserve whatever to supply vacancies. Once formed and sent away from its State, the regiment left no depot, for as all the posts considered worth filling were with the headquarters, there was no one who could carry on at its home the business of recruiting, much less of training. An action or two, a week in the sun, a swampy bivouac, might leave it the mere skeleton of its former self; and although the same State or municipality might send a fresh battalion to relieve it, there was no connection between the two, nor any advantage to the new-comers from the experience of the reduced but comparatively veteran body. To have attempted to remedy this by altering the volunteer system at its root, would in all probability have been fatal to its working. Nor was it until the stern pressure of events made the dreaded word conscription familiar among the hitherto free citizens of the North, that the president obtained a power of keeping up the number of his most valuable corps. With conscription, or following soon upon it, a new commander-in-chief came into power, of a degree hitherto unknown; and General Grant, freely using the means denied to MacClellan, and consolidating two or three of the reduced corps of veterans into one, gained a vigor and steadiness for the army of the Potomac, unknown during its previous three years of service.

Each branch of the army formed with such pains by MacClellan had its peculiarities, which were reproduced in more or less degree whenever Federal troops were organized, and were, in fact, national characteristics. The comte is a friendly critic, but he is also keen and searching; and he tells us of the infantry, that the men were strong of limb, but careless of husbanding their powers for a long march, unskilled in the fitting of their equipments, and of a bad carriage. As to the care of their arms, it was a thing unknown to them; a fact that might be amply testified to by the independent witness of British officers, who saw the soldiers of Burnside and Hooker bivouacking on the Rappahannock under rude tents supported by their rusting muskets. Moreover the greater part of them were very indifferent shots in action, a fault due largely to the first issues of arms being of so wretched a character as to discourage target practice as part of the ordinary exercises.

The artillery was a very favorite arm with these volunteers, suiting, as our author justly observes it does, the American turn for mechanics. And the troops of this branch had the advantage of much better instruction relatively than the infantry, inasmuch as a large proportion of the old regular force were artillerists, a fact which enabled MacClellan to assign a battery of regulars to each of his divisions as a model for those of the volunteers. The latter were organized entirely by 