Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1861-November 1863Cox, Jacob D. (Jacob Dolson)
History
Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1861-November 1863
Cox, Jacob D. (Jacob Dolson)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives
Let us look now at the physical and practical training of the cadet.
The whole period of his student life at West Point had more or less
of this. He was taken as a raw recruit would be, taught the school
of the soldier in marching, in the manual of arms, and in personal
carriage. He passed on to the drill of the squad, the platoon, the
company. The tactics of the battalion came last, and the cadet might
become a corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, or captain in the corps if
he showed aptitude for drill and tactics. It is noticeable, however,
that Grant and Sheridan remained privates during their whole
cadetship, and Sherman, though once he became sergeant, was put back
in the ranks. The fair conclusion is that this part of the cadet
discipline is not very closely connected with generalship, though it
is important as preparation for the ready handling of a company or a
battalion. Sherman tells us, in his Memoirs, that he studied
evolutions of the line out of the books, as a new subject, when he
was in camp in front of Washington, after the first battle of Bull
Run. [Footnote: Memoirs, vol. i. p. 220.] The tactical education of
the cadet stopped at the evolutions of the battalion, and for nearly
all of them it was, even in that respect, the education of the
soldier in the ranks and not of the officer, since a very small
proportion became officers in the cadet corps.
This practical drill was, of course, the same as that which was used
in organized militia regiments, and the famous Ellsworth Zouaves of
Chicago, the New York Seventh Regiment, with a number of other
militia regiments in different States, were sufficient proof that
this training could be made as exact outside of the cadet corps as
in it. It certainly was enough for the practical handling of the
company and the regiment under the simplified tactics which not only
prevailed during the war itself, but, with Upton's Manual as a
basis, has been authoritatively adopted as an improvement upon the
older and more complicated methods. It must not be forgotten that
although our militia system had fallen into scandalous neglect, the
voluntary efforts of citizen soldiers had kept many good independent
companies organized everywhere, as well as full regiments in most of
the older States; so that there were in fact more well-drilled
regiments in the militia than there were in the little regular army.
It was the small ratio all these, of both classes, bore to the
demands of the gigantic war that was upon us, which made the problem
so troublesome. The officers of the organized militia regiments,
before the end of the three months' service, did what I have said it
was desirable that those of the regular regiments should have
done,--they scattered from their original commands and were active
in organizing the new volunteer regiments. General De Trobriand, who
went out as Colonel of the Fifty-fifth New York, says that the New
York Seventh Regiment furnished three hundred officers to volunteer
regiments.
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