Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 7/The American generals - Part 2
THE AMERICAN GENERALS.
This week we resume and conclude our biographical sketches of the generals whose names of late have been most conspicuous in the records of Transatlantic war.
FEDERALS.
George B. Maclellan, of Pennsylvania, a cadet of 1842, won, as a lieutenant of Engineers, some credit and two brevets in Mexico; first organised the corps of U. S. Sappers and Miners; translated from the French a Manual of Bayonet Exercise for the use of the army; was, on account of his scientific attainments, despatched by the Executive to watch the operations of the Allied Armies in the Crimea; and, after criticising them somewhat harshly, subsequently left the service and engaged in civil engineering. I can add nothing as to his personal appearance to that which the able Special Correspondent of the “Times” has already told; and his recent military career is a sufficient criterion of his ability as a general.
John Pope, of Kentucky, a cadet of 1838, and afterwards of the Topographical Engineers, was twice brevetted during the Mexican campaigns. In 1861 he was an undistinguished captain of his corps, and I am at a loss to imagine how he attained to his recent eminent command, since daily observation of him during some months in 1845 and 1846 gave me no reason to conceive him possessed of any remarkable ability.
Henry Wager Halleck, of New York, a cadet of 1835, and of the Engineers; for a time one of the professors of the Military Academy; author of two works on “Bitumens,” and on the “Elements of Military Art and Science;” obtained a brevet for military services in California when that state was wrested from the Mexican Federation; was Secretary of State under the military government which followed its acquisition, and afterwards one of the convention which framed its state constitution in 1849. The political eminence which he had attained in that state led to his retiring from the army several years ago, and he has only resumed his sword at the call of the Federal Government.
Irvin McDowell, of Ohio, a cadet of 1834; as a lieutenant of the 1st Artillery served in the Mexican campaign, received a brevet, ere the close of the war was transferred to the Staff, and in 1861 was a brevet-major and assistant-adjutant-general. His name, previous to the present troubles, was known to me only as one of the Staff, and was not associated with any military achievement.
John Ellis Wool, of New York, entered the 13th Infantry in 1812, during the war with England; was present at the battles of Queenston and Plattsburgh; commanded a division of General Taylor’s army in Mexico; and was brevetted a major-general for having been present at the battle of Buena Vista. He is now a very old man, distinguished only by rank and long service, being generally regarded by the army to which he belongs as an imbecile.
Jos. J. K. Mansfield, of Connecticut, a cadet of 1817, served through the Mexican war as an Engineer officer; was once severely wounded, and once brevetted; and in 1861 was a colonel and inspector-general of the army. He wrote a common-place work on the Mexican campaign, and was a mild, kindly, old gentleman, never accused of any special ability.
Don Carlos Buell, of Ohio, an Infantry cadet of 1837, was present as a subaltern at all the battles in the valley of Mexico; once wounded, and once brevetted; and in 1861 was a brevet-major and assistant-adjutant-general. He has the reputation of being a very gallant soldier.
Edwin V. Sumner, of Massachusetts; entered the army in 1819, without passing through the usual preliminary instruction, as a lieutenant in the 2nd Infantry, and was Major of the 2nd Dragoons during the Mexican war. He was engaged in all the battles in the valley of Mexico; once wounded, and twice brevetted. During the Freesoil troubles in Kansas he was in military command there, was popularly known as “Old Bull of the Woods” from his shaggy beard and bluff equanimity, and acted throughout that struggle with great discretion. In 1861 he was colonel of the 1st Cavalry. He is esteemed an excellent Cavalry officer.
Jesse L. Reno, of Virginia, a cadet of 1842, subsequently of the Ordnance, was highly distinguished in command of a battery during the Mexican campaign, wherein he was severely wounded and twice brevetted. He was for a time mathematical professor at Westpoint, and in 1861 was junior captain of his corps.
Joseph Hooker, of Massachusetts, a cadet of 1833, afterwards of the 1st Artillery; received three brevets during the Mexican war; and retired from the army in 1848. Where he has been in the interim I cannot ascertain.
Philip Kearney, of New York, entered the 1st Dragoons in 1837; while yet a captain, commanded his regiment in all the engagements in the valley of Mexico, and lost his left arm from a wound received while pursuing the routed enemy up to the very walls of the capital. He resigned his commission in 1851. He was a fiery and energetic soldier, of fine personal appearance, and greatly admired by the soldiery.
Fitzjohn Porter, of New Hampshire, a cadet of 1841; received two brevets for services in Mexico, where he was once wounded; and was sometime one of the professors at Westpoint. He was in 1861 a brevet-major and assistant-adjutant-general.
Samuel P. Heintzelman, of Pennsylvania, a cadet of 1822; passed in 1832 from the 3rd Infantry to the General Staff, but on the breaking out of the Mexican war relinquished his appointment, returned to the line, and was once brevetted for his services in the campaign. In 1861 he was major of the 1st Infantry.
A. E. Burnside, of Indiana, a cadet of 1843; retired from the 2nd Artillery at some date subsequent to 1851.
Dixon S. Miles, of Maryland, a cadet of 1824, and successively in the 4th, 7th, 5th, and 2nd Infantry; served with distinction through the Mexican war, and was in 1861 colonel of the last-named corps. He was a tall, fine-looking man, benign and generous, a father to his men, and greatly beloved by them, but of mediocre ability. Those who knew him, know how little he deserved the obloquy ungenerously cast on his memory. His death has expiated to the full his lack of success.
Isaac J. Stevens, of Massachusetts, an Engineer graduate of 1835, long engaged on the fortifications of the coast of Maine; was severely wounded in the Mexican campaign, and received three brevets for “distinguished services.” For several subsequent years he was attached to the U. S. Coast Survey, whence he was promoted to the military command of Washington territory on the Pacific, and becoming afterward governor of it retired from the army. He was an officer of great professional ability and distinguished bravery, of pleasing person and fascinating manners, universally beloved and esteemed.
John Charles Fremont, a South Carolinian of French descent, was in 1838 irregularly appointed from civil life to a lieutenantcy in the Topographical Engineers, and entrusted with the command of two successive expeditions to explore the wild region traversed by the Rocky Mountains, and intervening between the western frontier and the territory claimed on the Pacific. In the course of these, he was exposed to great perils and hardships; and displayed such courage, fortitude, and enterprise, that the Federal Government appointed him, ignorant as he was of military matters, lieutenant-colonel of the Mounted Rifles; and, giving him with a latent political intent a military detachment far larger than could be needed for peaceful purposes as an escort, again despatched him to the far West. Reaching California, then forming part of Mexico, with which the States were at war, he abandoned his scientific pursuits, crossed the frontier, formed the American residents into a battalion, and co-operating with Commodore Sloat’s squadron, after going through the farce of declaring California an independent state under the protection of the Union, overran and subdued it. While this was being effected, General Stephen Kearney, a distinguished officer fresh from the conquest of New Mexico, reached the scene of action with a small force; and an unseemly squabble for supremacy ensued between the naval and military authorities, and between the General and the Lieutenant-Colonel, who claimed exemption from his jurisdiction as being on “particular service.” The altercation ended in Kearney’s being confirmed in the command and in Freemont’s being sent home under arrest for trial, which he avoided by resigning in 1848. Notwithstanding this evidence of an unwillingness to obey indicating unfitness for command, which yet later brought disaster on the Federal arms, his political influence was such as immediately to obtain for him his appointment as commissioner to define the boundary between the U. S. and Mexico. This office he relinquished on being elected senator for California, where his influence was great from his having availed himself of his former temporary authority to possess himself of large estates, whereto the subsequent gold discoveries gave immense value, and which have since been the subject of multitudinous law-suits. Freemont is now about fifty-one years of age; wiry, spare, sunburnt, and weather-beaten; with that look of vigilant sagacity characteristic of the hunter or backwoods man, whose perceptive faculties have been sharpened by the habit of peril and adventurous emergencies. The scientific attainments whereto he lays claim, and which are popularly imputed to him, are contemptuously denied by his quondam military brethren of the Engineers. His arrogant incompetence and malversation were amply exemplified by his late career in Missouri; and were the occasion presented to him, it is probable that his overweening vanity and restless ambition would prompt him to grasp at a supremacy, he would not have ability to retain.
Randolph B. Marcy, of Massachusetts, a cadet of 1828, and afterwards of the 5th Infantry, managed to avoid the perilous contingencies incident to the military profession by absenting himself from his regiment during the entire war with Mexico; cheerfully resigning its command to his juniors, conduct which would have for ever disgraced an officer in any other service. When it became safe to emerge from his retreat, fired by the achievements of Freemont, he importuned the authorities at Washington for the command of an expedition to explore a shorter route across the prairies to Utah and California; and being backed by influential friends, he eventually obtained it. His account of these two expeditions having been recently eulogised by a part of the English press, it may not be irrelevant to observe that the book is a refacciamento of other books, containing nothing about the regions traversed which was not known before, while by discreet suppression of the names of those who constructed his maps and plans, he disingenuously leaves it to be inferred that they are his own. These expeditions and the compilation of these reports having relieved him of military duty for several years, he eventually retired from the line on obtaining a lucrative appointment on the staff. Whilst it may be hard to discern what there was in such antecedents to qualify this man for the responsible office of chief of the Federal staff, which he now holds, they intelligibly account for much of the misfortune which has dogged the steps of the Federal army.
It will be seen from the preceding data that, contrary to the impression generally prevailing here—with exceptions that sufficiently prove the inferiority of amateur to professional soldiers,—the generals on either side have all at some period belonged to the regular army of the United States.
The fact that, from the slowness of promotion therein, an officer was superannuated by the time he attained a colonelcy in the line, accounts for most of the Federal generals being taken at this crisis from among the junior officers,—for youth is essential to military success, few being, like Radetsky, fit for command when octogenarians.
Miles and Sumner are the only colonels of the old army whose names appear; and it may be legitimately inquired wherefore the many promising subalterns that might be enumerated are not in command of volunteer regiments, in place of civilians whose only claim thereto has been their political influence. Having so efficient a force as the regular army at its disposal, when the Federal Executive decided against making it the nucleus of its irregular levies, as in instituting it the careful fathers of the Republic designed, by raising the value of the unit of organisation—the troop or company—from 50 to 100 or even 200, and the regiment from 500 to 5000; it erred grievously in not at least distributing it among the new battalions, in place of trusting entirely to raw tumultuary levies, without any interfusion of veterans to impart confidence and firmness.
The proximate causes of the different fortune which has attended the two groups of generals taken from the same army may, I conceive, be found in the differences of race and of social conditions—as determined by diverse geographical conditions—in the two hostile sections whereinto the former Republic is now divided.
The people of the South—generally of pure English descent, with an interfusion in Louisiana of French, and in Texas of Spanish, blood; inhabiting a fertile region, much of which is yet covered with dense forest, and varying their agricultural pursuits with hunting and other manly amusements; retaining an inferior race in subjection, therefore habituated to command and familiarised from childhood with the use of arms; bold, self-reliant, prompt for emergencies, and accustomed to peril—form a military aristocracy, like that of ancient Poland or Hungary under somewhat analogous conditions, and are peculiarly fitted for warfare.
The Southern gentleman who formerly entered the United States army was generally a landed proprietor, and adopted the profession of arms because possessed of those military tastes distinctive of his people; and it is noticeable that, whereas the great American writers, to the development of whose genius a life of contemplation and retirement was requisite, have almost all issued from the North: the men of action—the eminent soldiers, statesmen, and orators of the republic—have mostly been sons of the South. Fighting for national existence, and to revenge the ruin and havoc wrought by a barbarous enemy, under the most unfavourable circumstances, and with means seemingly inadequate to the magnitude of its undertaking; poorly clad, often shoeless, scantily fed, and indifferently armed, but calmly resolute, and confident in the justice of its cause; the Southern army has not quailed before the immense armaments opposed to it, nor been discouraged by disasters; and its officers being men of military genius, and not military pedants; and its operations being directed by a professional soldier of great ability, calm judgment, and singular discernment in the selection of his instruments—to whom the nation unanimously conceded a dictatorial power suited to the emergency—it has thus far been victorious.
On the other hand, the people of the North is of various origin, divided by antipathies of race, sect, and faction, by opposition of interests, and diversity of pursuits; chiefly aggregated in towns, cities, and their immediate vicinity, therefore largely depraved by the vices, and effeminated by the luxuries, of civilisation; greedy of gain, tricky, arrogant, braggart, and unfamiliar with, as reluctant to arms. The gentleman of the North who formerly entered the U. S. army did so ordinarily to secure a life of indolent ease. The Northern army has been numerically so immense as to be unwieldy, so well provided with military material as to be embarrassed it its movements by its own affluence of means, so confident of success as to be disheartened by the least reverses and thoroughly demoralised by successive defeats, which were partly due to the ignorant interference of the civilian at the head of the Federal government—constitutionally the commander-in-chief—a man vacillating because new to command and unequal to his position; who has been pliant to silly popular clamour when he should have been firm, and impracticable and stubborn when he should have been amenable to counsel.
It may be remarked, in conclusion, that, although the Confederate generals have certainly displayed singular genius, the sanguinary battles protracted through many successive days, while proving the rancour of the combatants, indicate a deficiency in the technical knowledge required to conduct war scientifically.
Carnage is not warfare, whatever the world may say. The great general is he who, from swift apprehension of the accidents of the ground, nice calculation of time and distance, and due consideration of the enemy’s arrangements and strength, effects his discomfiture and a determinate end, with comparatively little loss of life, by scientific disposition, and adroit manœuvring of his own forces. Genius is not self-sufficient for great results: the soldier, like the writer and the artist, only attains consummate skill by preliminary studies and long experience; and from the former distribution of the regular army, wherein these officers learned their profession, along the frontiers in trivial detachments, comparatively few of its officers have ever, previously to the present events, seen a division in the field, or had facilities for acquiring a practical knowledge of tactics and strategy. This will partially account for the character of the operations, and the slaughter of this civil war; since it would indeed have been marvellous had leaders, few of whom have ever previously commanded even a battalion, not been somewhat unequal to, and indexterous in, the direction of great armies.