Part 4

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.