The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 | Page 8

our case was nearly three
months.
How much of this delay was necessary or beneficial I leave for wiser
military critics than myself to discuss. The complaint it awakened at the
time has almost been forgotten in the glory of the achievements which
followed when the great army actually began to move. Perhaps it is
remembered only by those who mourn the brave young hearts that
never reached the battle field, but perished in the inglorious conflict

with disease and idleness. Few appreciate the fearful loss suffered from
these causes, unless they were present from day to day, watching the
regular morning reports, or meeting the frequent burial squads that
thronged the road to the cemetery. Even in a place like St. Louis, with
amply provided hospitals, and all the appliances of medical skill at
hand, men died at a rate which would have carried off half the army
before its three years' service expired. And of these deaths by far the
greater portion were the direct consequence of idleness and its
consequent evils in camp. The healthiest body of troops I saw in
Missouri were busy night and day with scouting parties, and living in
their tents upon a bleak hilltop, ten miles from the nearest hospital or
surgeon. When their regiment was concentrated after four months'
service, this company alone marched in the hundred and one men it had
brought from home, not a single man missing or on the sick list.
Perhaps another such instance could scarcely be found in the whole
army.
But it was not by death alone that precious material wasted faster than a
whole series of battles could carry it off. Under such circumstances the
living rot as well as the dead. Physically and morally the men
deteriorate for want of occupation that interests them. Most of our
Western volunteers were farmers' boys, fresh from an active, outdoor
life. They were shut up in the barracks, with no exercise but three or
four hours of monotonous drill, no outdoor life but a lounge over the
level parade ground, and no amusements but cards and the sutler's shop.
Their very comforts were noxious. The warm, close barracks in which
they spent perhaps twenty hours out of the twenty-four, would enervate
even a man trained to sedentary habits; and the abundant rations of hot
food, consumed with the morbid appetite of men who had no other
amusement, rendered them heavy and listless. In our regiment, at least,
it was absolutely necessary to cut down the rations of certain articles, as
for instance of coffee, and to prevent their too frequent use. The cooks
told us that it was not an uncommon thing for a man to consume from
four to six quarts of hot coffee at the three meals of a single day.
Upon their minds the influence was even greater than upon their bodies.
More enthusiastic soldiers never assembled in the world than came up

from all parts of the country to the various rendezvous of our
volunteers. This is not merely the partial judgment of a fellow
countryman. In conversation with old European officers of great
experience, who had spent the autumn in instructing different regiments,
I have heard testimony to this effect more flattering than anything
which I, as an American, should dare to say. Of course a part of this
enthusiasm was founded on an illusion which experience must sooner
or later have dispelled; but wise policy would have husbanded it as
long as possible, by putting them into service which should at the same
time have fed their love of adventure and given them practice in arms.
Even as a matter of drill--which to some of our officers seems to be the
great end, and not merely the means of a soldier's life--this would have
been an advantage. The drill of a camp of instruction is not only
monotonous, but meaningless, because neither officers nor men are yet
alive to its practical application. Had these men been placed at once
where something seemed to depend on their activity, instruction in
tactics would have been eagerly sought after, instead of being looked
upon as an irksome daily task. Nor would it have been necessary for
this purpose to place raw troops in positions of critical importance. The
vast extent of our line of operations, and the wide tracts of disaffected
country which were, or might easily have been, left behind it, offered
an ample field for a training as thorough as the most rigid martinet
could desire, at a safe distance from any enemy in force, but where they
would have been kept under the qui vive by the belief that something
was intrusted to them. Drill or no drill, I do not think there was a
colonel in the barracks who did