The Unpopular History of the United States by Uncle Sam Himself/Chapter 12

by Harris Dickson

XII

GEORGE’S PET

My son, I was speaking to you awhile ago about George Washington. Well, George had a pet scheme in the back part of his head, the foundation of a Military Academy. Only three days before his death he wrote to Alexander Hamilton: “The establishment of an institution of this kind has ever been considered by me as an object of primary importance for this country. When I was in the chair of Government I omitted no proper opportunity of recommending it.” Mr. McHenry, Secretary of War in 1805, submitted his views to Congress and said: “It cannot be forgotten that in our Revolutionary War it was not until after several years’ practice with arms, that our soldiers became at all qualified to meet on the field of battle those to whom they were opposed. Occasional brilliant and justly celebrated acts of some of our militia detract nothing from this dearly bought truth.”

By Act of 1805 Congress authorized the President to establish a Corps of Engineers, with a cadre of not over 20 officers and cadets, “which shall be stationed at West Point in the State of New York, and shall constitute a Military Academy.”

Mighty small potatoes to begin with, but it grew.

During this period between the Revolution and the War of 1812 we had the Shay Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, complications with England and also with the Republic of France. Congress appropriated money to fortify the coast and authorized the President to raise a provincial army of 10,000 men, in case of a declaration of war against the United States. They meant to wait, however, until war was actually declared against us. This army was never called into service. Later on further preparations were made for conflict with Great Britain, but Congress, with full power to maintain a real army, still clung to its militia delusion, and even reënacted the odious and ineffective bounty provisions.

Bounty attractions drew precisely the same results—or rather lack of results. The army, which in 1810 numbered 2,765, had only increased to 6,686 in July, 1812. On paper we were supposed to muster 35,603 men. It passes human belief that our muddle-headed mistakes should be repeated and made more glaring by a return to short-term enlistments so appalling in the Revolution. But that is exactly what Congress did, by reducing the term of enlistment from five years to 18 months. As a further and ghastlier joke the President was empowered to require the governors of the States to hold in readiness to march at a moment’s notice a detachment of militia not exceeding 80,000 officers and men. The trouble is that such militia marched backwards much more fluently than they ever advanced forward. I’m going to tell you more about this presently, the harrowing story of how the capital of this nation fell.

When our relations with England and France were such that we only maintained an army of 2,000 to 3,000 men, it did not need officers. And for a dead certainty we did not have them. But when war stared us again in the face it was more than criminal neglect to find that after 25 years of independence we were entering another great struggle with officers scarcely more efficient than those whom Washington had deplored in the first years of the Revolution. Up to 1812 only 71 cadets had graduated from the Military Academy.

Then, although we had been expecting it for fourteen years, the War of 1812 sneaked up behind us. Remember the ostrich?

Whether we saw it coming or not, we had another big war on our hands. In spite of the fact that six months previously Congress had increased, on paper, the regular establishment to 35,000 men, only 6,744 were actually present and ready for service.

Manifestly if we were going to strike England it must be through Canada. Our Secretary of War gained the information that Great Britain’s regular forces in Canada did not exceed 6,000 men. Reliable English writers of the time say that their force numbered 4,450, largely composed “of old men and invalids fit only for barracks duty.” My son, I don’t know exactly what they were fit for, but they were fit. I can prove that by various American expeditions that were dispatched against them.

You cannot understand the situation unless you recall that we were working under the military laws of May, 1792. Congress had the theoretical right to call together an army, but it was like calling spirits from the vasty deep—anybody can call the spirits but they won’t come.

The Governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut positively refused to furnish their quotas of the 100,000 militia authorized by the Act of April 10, 1812. They claimed that state militia could only be employed in the service of the United States for three purposes—executing the laws of the Union, suppressing insurrection, and repelling invasion. These governors wanted to know precisely where their men were to be used, and how. President Madison could not order the state militia into national service without forcing individual men to become deserters from their states, because the law made no exception if a man left the state service to enter the service of the nation. These governors were able to paralyze for the time being the military power of their respective states, and defeat the plans of the general government. Every wheel had to stop while the Supreme Judicial Court solemnly litigated the wrangle. This learned debate complicated the enlistment proposition, and the men themselves took it up, discussing the question at their camp fire courts. Presently we’ll see what effect this had at Queenstown. It hurts mightily to rake all these skeletons out of my family closet, but I couldn’t stand to look at them if we had not through later years absolutely demonstrated the courage and capacity of American volunteers—once they had been trained and are under rigid discipline. I merely want to impress upon you the fact that our boys need work and steady training before they’re worth a hang as soldiers.