Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/258

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��The Northei'n Vohtiiteers.

��organizer of armies for the courage and foresight which sustained liim in his purpose, against the clamors of the North to move against the enemy, until he had made his army fit to take the field.

The armies, both East and West, became equal to tactics in the face of the enemy before the end of 1862, although it was in the very campaign itself that our soldiers had to learn much of their trade. Later in the war grand movements were performed with ease. In the pursuit of Lee, April 6, 1865, a line of four brigades of the second army corps, over a mile long, swept forward, over hills, across ravines, and through forest and field for thirteen miles, attacking the ene- my's rear guard of infantry and ar- tillery, which made stands at intervals of two or three miles, without stop- ping to straighten the line, and rout- ing them every time. This was a display of tactics on a grand scale, and it is difficult to believe that for- eign armies could do better.

ENDURANCE.

Our soldiers underwent trials of their endurance unusual with standing armies, from the ignorance of officers in the matter of preserving their health, and the inexperience of the men themselves in camp life; but knowledge came with time, and the native skill in woodcraft and building shelter, and abundant and regular rations and plenty of clothing, did much to mitigate the evils of igno- rance. Rations were not indeed al- ways on hand, or always palatable. The soldiers had so little respect for the corned beef that they called it " salt horse," and it was said that the

��letters " B. C." were found imprinted on some of the hard bread. It was insisted that these letters marked the era in which the bread was baked.

The comparison of the rate of death from disease in our volunteer army with that of other armies, al- though not a conclusive test of endur- ance, has some significance. With our army it was 8.6 per cent, during the war. In the British array it was 11.3 per cent, in the Peninsular war (1811-1814), and 20.2 per cent, in the Crimea.

Marches are a test of endurance Probably the long march of weeks or days, which shows the strength of all the men, affords a better comparison than the forced march, which leaves many by the roadside and proves only what the strongest can do. Sherman's army marched 190 miles in seven days, an average of 27^ miles a day. The Army of the Potomac made twenty-five miles a day for several days in May, 1865.

Coming to forced marches, we read that twenty-three miles in eighteen hours, and twenty-seven miles in nineteen hours, were looked upon as extraordinary marches by two divi- sions of Germans on the way to Gravelotte. Friaut's French division made ninety-nine miles in forty-eight hours to reach the field of Austerlitz. Crawford's British division marched sixty-two miles in twenty-six hours to the field of Talavera, and forty miles in nineteen hours over the mountain roads of Spain in pursuit of Soult. But on this last march many men gave out, and some fell and died, while on the former march only seventy men gave out. This shows how differences in roads and

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