Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/257

 The JVorthcrn Volunteers.

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��becomes efficient in war is that which enables him to march elbow to elbow with his comrades in the ranks, straight ahead, so that a long line will advance over the country without becoming crooked or broken u|) ; to go through the various evolutions in column or line, to load and fire with rapidit}' and effectiveness, and to handle arms with skill and ease. These are the chief results of mili- tary skill. To one unacquainted with the subject the attainment of this skill would not seem a matter of much time, but, in fact, it involved the making over of the carriage and gait, the grafting of habits of celerity and promptness, and the teaching of many things which had to be mem- orized with great exactness.

Our foreign critics have said that for a time we lost chances for victory because our ranks did not respond quickly enough to command, and that our ti'oops were heavy for want of practice in grand parade movements, and that their inexperience and un- familiarity with war led them to intrench too much. This last criti- cism reverses the fact. It was ex- perience in war that led us to intrench, and we did not adhere to this habit when it became unprofitable.

The Army of the Potomac fought fifteen battles, including the fierce contests of Fair Oaks, second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg, and the Seven Days battles, before they intrenched on the field of battle ; and after the year of intrenching in the Wilderness and Petersburg cam- paigns, the armies under Grant threw down the shovel, and forgot the habit of intrenching in the last campaign.

There is justice in the other criti-

��cisms. The first battle of Bull Run was lost by reason of want of disci- pline and military skill. Without doubt the Northern army was com- posed of the very best material there, but a multitude of men who have not learned how to obey orders, and that orders must be obeyed, derives no advantage from numbers ; and our army was neither well disciplined nor well drilled. Shiloh afforded another instance. Gen. Grant tells us that three of his divisions were entirely raw, and that both officers and men were ignorant of their duties, and that, as a consequence, many of the regiments broke at the first fire, and that afterward he found thousands of these men " lying under cover of the river bluff, panic stricken," and that most of them " would have been shot where they lay, without resistance, before they would have taken mus- kets and marched to the front to protect themselves." Yet these were strong manful Westerners, of un- doubted native courage and intelli- gence ; and Gen. Grant says of them, — " Better troops never went on a field of battle than many of these, officers and men, afterward proved them- selves to be, who fled panic-stricken at the first whistle of bullets and shell at Shiloh."

The Army of the Potomac did not have the bad fortune to engage in battle until it had been drilled and disciplined, and, as a consequence, it went through its first bloody campaign with no misconduct of this kind. Whatever criticism may be made of Gen. McClellan's conduct of opera- tions in the field, no candid soldier who served under him can refuse his praise and gratitude to that great

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