Various - The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863

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 not know that his men would have been worth more if marched from the place of enlistment directly into the open field, than they were after months in a place where the whole tendency was to chill their patriotism by making them feel useless, and to wear off the fine edge of their patriotism by subjection to the merest mechanical process of instruction.

But without dwelling longer on a subject still so delicate as this, let it be said that the advantages of the camp of instruction were principally with the officers. These really learned many things they needed to know, and perhaps unlearned some that they needed as much to forget. I have hinted already at one of these latter lessons—that of their own insignificance. Familiarity breeds contempt, even with shoulder straps. It did the captains and majors and colonels, each of whom had been for a time the particular hero of his own village or county, not a little good to find themselves lost in the crowd, and quite overshadowed by the stars of the brigadiers. Even these latter did not look quite so portentous and dazzling when we saw them in whole constellations, paling their ineffectual rays before the luminary of headquarters. Many an ambitious youth, who had come from home with very grand though vague ideas of the personal influence he was to have upon the country's destinies, found it a wholesome exercise to stand in the mud at the gate all day as officer of the guard, and touch his hat obsequiously to the general staff. If there was good stuff in him he soon got over the first disappointment, and learned to put his shoulder more heartily to that of his men, when he found that his time was by no means too valuable to be chiefly spent in very insignificant employments. Some few, it is true, never could have done this, even if they had been brayed in a mortar. I remember one fussy little cavalry adjutant, who never allowed a private to pass him without a salute, or sit down in his presence. I lost sight of the fellow soon afterward, but it was with great satisfaction that I saw his name gazetted a week or two since, 'dismissed the service.'

As for regular instruction in tactics, there was perhaps as much as the nature of the case admitted, to wit, none at all. Every now and then a fine system would be organized, and promulgated in general orders. Sometimes a series of recitations were prescribed that would have dismayed a teachers' institute. Field officers were to say their lessons every evening at headquarters, and head classes from their own line in the forenoon. The company officers in turn were to teach non-commissioned ideas how to shoot. Playing truant was strictly forbidden; careless officers who should 'fail to acquire the lesson set for them' were to be reported, and, I presume, the unlucky man who missed a question would have seen 'the next' go above him till the bright boy of each class had worked his way up to the head. These systems did not prove a failure: they simply never went at all, but were quietly and unanimously ignored by teacher and teachee. Every man was left to thumb his Hardee in private, and find out what he lacked by his daily blunders on drill. These furnished ample subject for private study, as well as for animated discussion among the other military topics that occupied our leisure. Emulation and the fear of ridicule kept even the most indolent at work.

It was amusing to see how rapidly the esprit de corps —their own favorite word, which they took infinite pleasure in repeating on all occasions—grew upon our newly made warriors. How learned they were upon all the details of 'the service,' and how particularly jealous of the honors and importance of their own particular 'arm!' I used to listen with infinite relish to the discussion in our colonel's quarters, which happened to be a favorite rendezvous for the field officers of some half dozen different regiments, during the idle hours of the long winter evenings. No matter how the conversation commenced, it was sure to come down to this at last, and cavalry, infantry, and artillery blazed away at each other in a voluble discussion that was like Midshipman Easy's triangular duel multiplied by six.

'There's no use talking, colonel, you never have done anything against us in a fair hand-to-hand fight, and you never can.'

( You on this occasion may be supposed to be cavalry, personified in a long, lantern-jawed attorney from Iowa, while us stands for infantry, represented by an ex-drover from Indiana.)

'Never done anything, eh?' replies the attorney, who, on the strength of a commission and mustache of at least six months' date, ranks as quite a veteran in the party; 'what did you do at Borodino? Pretty show you made there when we came charging down upon you!'

'Oh, that was all somebody's fault—what's his name's, you know, that commanded there. Didn't find those charges work so well at Waterloo, did you?' Thus the ex-drover, fresh from the perusal of Halleck on Military Science.