with the South. It was a fair question whether, after the withdrawal of the southern generals, the North had left a competent military leader. General Emory Upton, in his Military Policy of the United States,* says: On the thirty-first of March, 1862, the Government had in service an army of 637,126 men, nearly all of whom were enlisted for the term of three years. The Confederate Army, composed largely of one-year volunteers, whose enlistments were on the eve of expiring, scarcely exceeded 200,000 men. The failure to subdue the Rebellion in 1861 has already been explained by our total want of military organization and preparation. The failure to subdue it in 1862, with the amazing advantages possessed by the Union, proceeded from a cause entirely different-the mismanagement of our armies. Humiliated and made wiser by the defeat at Bull Run, the President, the Cabinet, and the people, were at first disposed to give the new commander all the time necessary to organize and discipline his troops; but when several months had passed with no indication of an advance, the army in the meantime having increased to above 200,000 men, impatience for action returned with accumulated force. When Gen. McClellan assumed command, he found his army "cowering on the banks of the Potomac," the troops and the people alike demoralized by the defeat and panic at Bull Run. He knew that but two things, men, and the time to make them. soldiers, were necessary to restore the ascendency of the Government. The men were given liberally, but time to drill them could not be accorded. When the armies throughout the country, with scarcely a shadow of discipline, had swelled to the aggregate of 600,000, the expense of supporting them was so great that the President was forced to declare if something was not soon done "the bottom would be out of the whole affair." At the time of the appointment of Gen. McClellan the fate of the nation seemed to depend upon this single individual. In *This remarkable book which for years lay pigeonholed in Washington, is now published, in full and in abbreviated form, by the United States Government for use as a text-book. the organization of his army he stood alone. None of his brigade, division, or corps commanders had ever seen service as such. None of them, as in Europe, had exercised command at maneuvers or had been practiced in handling large bodies of troops. The colonels, from whom the future brigadiers were mostly to come, were nearly all from civil life, with but little knowledge of tactics or standard of discipline, by which to gauge the proficiency of their troops. A difficulty of nearly equal magnitude confronted him in the staff. The Adjutant General's Department for want of interchangeability with the line could not, as in European services, furnish competent chiefs of staff to him or to any of his corps and division commanders. It was during the month lost by the delay at Yorktown, that the Confederate Congress abandoned voluntary enlistments, adopted conscription, and took away from the governors the power to commission Confederate officers; it was during this month, when the Army of the Potomac should have been at the doors of Richmond, that almost every regiment of the Confederate Army was reorganized; it was during this month that Confederate conscripts began to pour into the old regiments instead of being formed into new organizations; it was during this and the two succeeding months, while McDowell was held back, that these conscripts, associated with veteran comrades, acquired courage and discipline, and it was by concentration during the last month that the Confederate Army was made to equal its opponent. The loss of battles was but a trifle compared with the other consequences of this one month's delay. It arrayed against us a military system, which enabled the Confederate Government to call out the last man and the last dollar, as against a system based on voluntary enlistment and the consent of the States. It was no longer a question of dealing a dissolving army its deathblow. We had permitted a rival government to reorganize its forces, which we now were compelled to destroy by the slow process of attrition. One thing the nation learned, or should have learned, out of the tragic experiences of the first years of the war, and that was that the question of winning battles was largely a question of trained leadership. We have tried our best not to learn this lesson. The volunteer soldier despised, or affected to despise, UNION GENERALS UNION GENERALS PROMINENT IN LAST HALF OF THE WAR From Second Volume of Greeley's American Conflict leaders who had had military training. In the Mexican War, General Taylor, as "Old Rough and Ready," achieved a popularity which General Scott, "Old Fuss and Feathers," coveted but never attained. So, in the Civil War, the sympathy and enthusiasm of the volunteer soldier were for the volunteer officer, and the volunteer officer held the West Point graduate in open scorn. But it was the West Point graduates on both sides who proved themselves capable of sustained leadership. Sending soldiers to the front is a hazardous thing at best, but sending them to the front under undisciplined officers is manslaughter, and sometimes murder. The men who won the war were the men trained at West Point. The war did not produce its leaders out of raw material. All soldiers need disciplined leaders, but undisciplined soldiers especially need trained officers, or an army becomes a panic-stricken mob. But where was the general to lead the Union Armies to victory? There was no lack of men or money, but where was the leader? The Greeks, having two words to our one for "man" have a proverb which we are incapable of translating literally, but the spirit of it might be suggested by the words, "We have plenty of men, but where is the man?" On September 8, 1862, a week after the appointment of McClellan and shortly before Antietam, Edmund Clarence Stedman published his poem which echoed the pathetic cry of the North, "Abraham Lincoln, give us a man!" We must quote it in full: WANTED A MAN Back from the trebly crimsoned field |