CHAPTER IX.
Wherein Captain Galligasken has Something to say about Citizen Soldiers, and follows the illustrious Soldier into the Field in Missouri.
The "thinking bayonets" of the United States army, in a merely disciplinary point of view, were not at first the best of material of which to make soldiers. To a vastly greater extent than any other armies which have been gathered since the foundations of the earth were laid, they were composed of intelligent, educated men. They could read and write, and were competent to do their own thinking, and to form their own judgments. They had ideas of their own in regard to the war, and the means of carrying it on.
The men in the ranks, as well as those with warrants and commissions in their pockets, were, without many exceptions, the graduates of the free schools which are the greatest glory of the nation. They read the newspapers, the potent educators of the people. They were the village politicians, the schoolmasters, the printers, the intelligent mechanics, the merchants, ministers, lawyers, and doctors of the country. There was no pursuit or profession in the land which was not represented in the volunteer army.
All of them were thoroughly imbued with the spirit of our democratic institutions. Each man in the rank and file of the grand army, as a citizen, was the peer of the president, the governor of his state, or of the mightiest man of the nation. Any infraction of their rights they were ready to resent and resist. Regarded, therefore, as the mere insensate humanity of which an army is composed, they were not the most hopeful material. Blindly to obey without question, heavily to be hampered with the details of what seemed to them needless restrictions and regulations, meekly to ignore their own will, and follow unchallenged the will of another, was a condition of life for which their education and habits had not prepared them. They were willing to fight to the death, but to become mere stupid machines, moved by their officers, was at first hardly within the scope of their democratic philosophy. Even while they acknowledged the necessity of strict discipline, and advocated its enforcement, the details of the daily routine pinched them severely.
The officers of the regular army were rigid disciplinarians. Those who had been in the service had been accustomed to different and coarser material than that which formed the volunteer army. Their men had never had a voice in choosing their officers, whose responsibility was in the direction of the War Department, and not at all in the direction of the force they commanded. It had been their province to command, as it had been that of their men to obey, not only on the battle-field, but in all the minutiæ of the camp and the garrison. One of these soldiers could be punished for neglecting to button his coat on parade, or to clean the spot of rust from the barrel of his musket; for being two inches short of the regulation step, or for a degree of variation in the angle of his feet in the line. Men who had left the plough in the furrow on the farm which they had paid for and owned, to fight the battles of the republic, were at least impatient under such restraints.
Efficient regular officers, however popular they became on the field of battle, were in perhaps a majority of instances exceedingly obnoxious to the troops in camps of organization and discipline. With the democratic ideas of the soldiers, with their republican notions of equality, it was hardly possible that it should be otherwise; for the transition of the citizen from his social rank in the city and the village to the ranks of the army was a violent and radical change to him. Doubtless, in many cases, these West Point officers were martinets, and, "armed with a little brief authority," were unnecessarily arbitrary and severe; but it was not these alone who were stigmatized as "tyrants" and "oppressors."
Without discipline, even down to the minute details of which a civilian can have no adequate conception or appreciation, an army is inefficient, and in a measure useless. The regular officers justified themselves before the enemy, if they did not sooner, not alone in the merit of their fighting capacity, but in those obnoxious details of discipline.
Grant was a regular army officer, a strict but prudent disciplinarian. Several regiments desired to elect him as their colonel, which amply vouches for his popularity before he had come into direct and intimate contact with the volunteer force. There was magic in the idea of having a commander who had not only received a regular military education, but who had won a reputation on the field of battle. It was a guaranty of the future welfare of the regiment. To maintain this respect, and keep up this popularity during the actual enforcement of arbitrary and disagreeable military regulations, was a vastly greater achievement.
The Twenty-first Illinois Infantry was a body of three months troops. In this, even more than in many other regiments, the democratic ideas of equality, so pernicious in a military organization, were prevalent to such an extent that the colonel, whose place Grant had been appointed to fill, could not manage it. Peculiar circumstances were involved in the relations of the commander and the troops; and when it is considered that the lesson of the necessity of discipline had not yet been learned, it is hardly proper to blame either party. The regiment was then in a demoralized condition, but it was composed of splendid material, and its subsequent record proves that its men were apt scholars in the school of discipline as well as in that of actual conflict.
They were proud to have a regular army officer as their leader; but when he made his appearance before them, his rather rusty clothes, and plain, matter-of-fact manner, excited their ridicule. However they soon stumbled against his iron will, and promptly realized that they had a commander who had been in the habit of being obeyed, and who intended to be in the present instance. He was not a showy man, and not one who was disposed merely to play soldier. They saw that he meant fight, and meant discipline.
Colonel Grant marched his regiment to Caseyville, where he drilled the men for four weeks, transforming them from a mob into one of the best disciplined bodies of troops in the country; indeed, the Twenty-first became noted for its drill and discipline. It was no easy thing at that time, when the private in the ranks regarded himself as the equal of the colonel, and was unwilling, even in his military relations, to sacrifice his own individual will,—it was no easy thing to bring order and regularity out of the chaos of equality and confusion. But Grant accomplished this, and more than this; and he did it so skilfully and adroitly that no heads were broken, and no man was persuaded into the belief that he was no longer an American citizen.
Grant has been nominated to the highest office in the gift of the people—a position which will make him the peer of emperors and kings; and it is important to deduce from his record the evidence of his fitness for this splendid elevation. An iron will, unmodified by other noble traits of character, is an element of weakness rather than of strength, for a merely obstinate man at the helm of state is a discordant and dangerous element. A strong will, sustained and dignified by high aims and genuine principle, is a godlike attribute; without true principle and high aims, it reduces the man to the vilest brute level: it makes him a Nero or a Caligula.
I am filled with admiration when I think of the excellent manner in which Grant managed this regiment, and raised it from disgrace and inefficiency to honor and usefulness. I do not hazard much in declaring, that, under the circumstances, it was one of his most skilful achievements. Then he was without influence; there was none of the magic in his name which time and victory have wreathed around it; his reputation as an officer hardly equalled that of hundreds of others around him. He took a disorganized, turbulent regiment, recruited it in a few days up to the maximum standard, and, in spite of all the disadvantages in the material and the surrounding circumstances, raised it to the highest state of discipline. His prompt and perfect success demonstrates his superior executive ability. He won the hearts of his men, so that they reënlisted for three years. He had entire control over them, and his influence was unbounded.
He was obliged to educate his command up to his ideas of discipline, to exterminate their republican notions of equality, so far as they interfered with complete military subordination, and to inspire their bosoms with the true spirit of a patriot army. It does not appear that he achieved this miracle by blind, injudicious severity. His modesty and his firmness were yoked together to carry him through the emergency. He used tact and skill, as well as force, in harmonizing the discordant materials, and soon blended the whole in symmetrical union, and welded himself to the mass by a bond of sympathy, a chain of influence, which none of the accidents of hard service could break. To me this marvellous influence which he obtained over his men, and which he always obtained, however his numbers swelled, is one of the most significant indications of his greatness.
The American people are no man-worshippers; I say it advisedly and confidently. They are generous in their regard, and no earnest patriot can ever want encouragement; but they judge men by the quality of their services. They praise and applaud, perhaps extravagantly, when a man does a noble deed; but they worship the deed rather than the man. General McClellan was for a time the idol of the soldiers and the idol of the people. They cheered and shouted for him, and hailed him as their young Napoleon; but when he failed to answer their reasonable expectations, they dropped him, and buried him forever and forever. So would they have done with Grant, and Sherman, and Thomas, and Sheridan, if they had failed them in the hour of trial; and so will they yet do, if they are recreant to their high estate, or false to the principles to which the people hold them.
No man has been more honored or praised in his sphere than Andrew Johnson; and none has been more thoroughly detested, despised, and cast out. It was not the man they worshipped; it was the principle of which he was the representative. No man in all the country has a personal influence which can save him from obloquy when he deserts his colors or fails in his duty. Glory and honor to the people who faithfully cling to their heroes and statesmen while they are true to their principles! Glory and honor, also, to the people who sternly pull down and cast out their heroes and statesmen, whatever high eminence they may have gained, when they are recreant to the trust imposed in them! Thus do our republican institutions operate, that no amount of personal popularity can save the great man from his doom when he is guilty of treachery or unjustifiable failure. They do not worship the man; if they did, they would cling to him through his shame and infidelity.
Neither the soldiers nor the people blindly worship Grant. It always has been, and still is, possible for him to fall. If he should prove false to the principles of which an overwhelming majority of the people hold him up as the representative, both soldiers and citizens would remorselessly trample him under their feet, and forget that he had ever been their idol. I say, then, that his remarkable popularity, its steady blaze in the past, and its constant brightening, are the best evidences of his solid abilities, of his unflinching devotion to principle, of the purity of his patriotism.
I know what the people would do with him if he should fail them; but in the light of his glorious record through a period of seven of the most eventful years in the history of the country, I feel that it is as impossible for him to be recreant in thought or in deed as it is for the sun to cease shining. I dwell fondly on the early days of his military career in the Rebellion, for then, before Fame had twined his laurel, or success had inspired him, we find that every act he performed, every order he issued, every movement he made, is fit to be recorded in the temple of his fame. Those who are looking up to him, on the dazzling height to which his genius and his high principle have borne him, may be instructed by a review of his relations with the Twenty-first Illinois Regiment. They may see the man there, as well as at Vicksburg and Appomattox Court House.
Colonel Grant was drilling his men at Caseyville, when there was a rumor that Quincy, on the Mississippi River, was in danger from the guerrilla rebels of Missouri. He was ordered to the exposed point, and, in the absence of transportation, marched his regiment one hundred and twenty miles of the distance. From Quincy he was ordered over the river into Missouri, for the protection of the Hannibal and St. Joseph's Railroad; and Brigadier General Pope, then in command of the forces in that section, stationed him at Mexico, forty miles north of the Missouri River.
On the march to this place, the Twenty-first passed through a small village whose principal establishment was a grocery, at which the principal article on sale was whiskey. It was a melancholy fact that many of the citizens now transformed into soldiers had acquired a villanous habit of imbibing this fiery fluid, so destructive to good discipline. Some of the troops stole out of the line, and filled their canteens with the liquor at this shop, and, lacking discretion as well as correct personal habits, were soon reeling from the effects of their frequent potations. Without any violent demonstrations of indignation, which many men would have deemed necessary on such an occasion, Colonel Grant halted his regiment, as if to afford the men a brief rest. Without giving any one an opportunity to suspect that anything was the matter, he passed along the lines, and examined each canteen. Whenever he detected the odor of whiskey, he coolly emptied the contents on the ground, "without note or comment." The intoxicated ones he ordered to be tied behind the wagons, and kept there till they were animated by higher views of military discipline. Whiskey and all intoxicating liquors were rigidly excluded from his camp.
Grant was always on time himself, and required promptness and punctuality in all his officers. He never blustered, or seemed to be in a hurry. He insisted that everything should be done at the appointed time. One morning the colonel was walking about the camp, smoking his pipe, when he discovered a company drawn up at roll call. It was half an hour after the required time, and Grant quietly informed the officer that it was no time to call the roll, and ordered him to send his men immediately to their quarters. He was promptly obeyed, and the delinquent was punished for his want of punctuality. The colonel resumed his pipe and his walk, as though nothing had happened. This quiet, undemonstrative way was effective, and the offence was not again repeated.
Careful and particular in the minor details of duty, his regiment was brought up to the highest degree of discipline; but it was quite as much the manner as the substance which attracts attention.