THE ARMY IN THE CIVIL WAR.

BY CHAS. A. PARTRIDGE.

[Charles A. Partridge, adjutant general of the Grand Army of the Republic, Illinois; is one of the best known veterans of the Civil war; he enlisted as a private in the Ninety-sixth Illinois Volunteers, and was promoted successively to corporal, sergeant, sergeant-major and lieutenant; after the close of the war he re-entered civil life, and has been one of the most active men in the organization of the Grand Army, becoming assistant adjutant general of Illinois in 1891 and adjustant general in 1904.]

The year 1860 found the United States at peace with all the world. The domestic problems that confronted the American republic were not new and few had any thought that these would not be threshed out as had been all others that had arisen since the adoption of the constitution.

The feeling of security from a foreign foe-no one conceived of domestic strife-due to the broad oceans that lave the American shores, had so influenced congress that the army had been reduced to about ten thousand men.

And this organization was not in fact an army at all, but a uniformed body of national servants divided practically into three departments. There were the engineers, a corps of scientists making civil maps, topograpical explorations and geological and geographical investigations, and doing the work of the government in dredging waterways, erecting lighthouses and building bridges and canals, all in the way of commerce and industry.

Then came, in order of precedence, the so-called artillery. This was a corps of caretakers who had charge of a series of obsolete forts that had been quite up to date about 1812.

The officers of this corps had a good knowledge of ordnance and gunnery from books, the men had most of them never even seen a modern piece of heavy ordnance. Had these old forts been armed, there were not enough men available to move them and keep the guns clean from the wear and tear of time.

The third, most important and only fighting department

of the army, was a frontier police engaged in controlling the Indians and caring for the settler and the plains man.

This work was, at its most, partisan warfare, and while a good school for the individual soldier, did little towards the training of an army-and a school for the individual soldier has ever been the one thing America needs the least. The officers of this small army were all, however, thanks to the military academy at West Point, well grounded in the theory of war, and there were a number of veterans of the war with Mexico who had had some practical experience. On account of the fact that a military career seemed more to the taste of the men of the south than to those of the north, there were in the army in 1860 a preponderance of southern born officers who, when the war broke out, with a few exceptions, resigned and gave their swords to the confederacy.

The army was so small and so scattered and shattered by resignations that it was not available even as a nucleus for an army large enough to cope with the situation in 1861. It was therefore necessary to create an army from top to bottom. Moreover there was no adequate store of arms, material and supplies, nor were there available any plants where these could be made. The government was in fact in the position of a man who has to make a voyage and finds it necessary first to construct the tools with which to build the vessel, then train the builders, then train the crew. Fortunately the confederate government was in much the same predicament, although it had the advantage of having a few tools on hand.

The union authorities resorted to the only possible solution of the problem, i. e., provided for the organization of a volunteer army of seventy five thousand men. So little was realized the magnitude of the task before them that the period of enlistment, three months, was too short to convert even the enthusiastic and intelligent body of men who responded, from an armed mob to an even poorly trained army, had there been no fighting to be done.

However, this mob promptly invaded Virginia with the idea of spending the closing period of enlistment in Richmond, the capital of the confederacy. A similar army rushed to

defend the sacred soil of the mother of presidents and a riot ensued, called the first battle of Bull Run.

Had the union mob been an army it would not have lost the won fight by a stampede, and had the confederate mob been an army, it would have been in Washington the next day.

The battle of Bull Run, however, marked an epoch in the history of warfare. The Virginia Black Horse Cavalry, as fine a body of mounted fighters as ever rode to battle, charged infantry in position. This was the end of the Black Horse, and was a demonstration of the fact that the day of the dashing cavalry charge was past, as regards any infantry of quality not demoralized by some immediately preceding event.

Bull Run was of no importance as a military event, but it showed both sides that war is a science, not an excursion, and both governments suspended operations in order to create, equip and train an army.

The situation as a military problem to be met was this: the confederate states being only desirous of seceding from the American union, were entirely on the defensive; the north in order to preserve the union must invade; to remain north of the line and protest would accomplish nothing.

It was necessary to seek and crush the newly established confederate government; this government could and did exist as long at it had armed forces and no longer-being on the defensive, the confederate army could to a certain extent select the theater of war.

There were two courses open to the union army-either find and destroy the confederate fighting forces by battle, or starve them out by destroying or obtaining control of the sources of supply. The American government wisely chose to do both. The war was therefore from the first sharply divided into two great struggles; one in the east, Virginia, aimed directly at the confederate army and as a matter of morale at the confederate capital, Richmond; the other, in the west, aimed entirely at the resources and entity of the south as a nation.

On account of the fact that the confederates in Virginia were fighting a defensive campaign on familiar grounds amidst a friendly population the struggle was during the first

years of the war in favor of the south, and the war might have gone on indefinitely or even have been successful for the south, had the southwest and west not been lost. The preponderance of men and treasure held by the north was fully equalized by the fact that the union army was the invader. The south was also fortunate in that it had in Lee one of the great defensive fighters of history, and such was his personal popularity and prestige that he was unhampered by politicians and theorists in his rear. The union army was not at first able to develop a genius in war, for no northern general up to the time of Grant was ever given a free hand.

In the consternation induced by the magnitude of the struggle the administration at Washington forgot what the history of the United States has so plainly shown, i. e., that the American soldier devises his own and original methods; and it resorted to the antique system of the star chamber, which from a closet in the capital directs in detail an army in the field.

Nevertheless, such was the devotion and skill of the union army that the confederates could only maintain a status quo. Both times that an offensive movement was made by Lee the outcome was disastrous to him and his course, and in the case of the second attempt the battle of Gettysburg was really, taken in connection with the fall of Vicksburg, the beginning of the end of the war. Henceforth the outcome of the struggle was only a question of time, as the north had shown the ability and willingness to fight to the end, and the only thing needed was to find a commander able to cope successfully with Lee. He was found in Grant and the bloody fields of Virginia had trained his army.

The problem in the west, the destruction of the confederate resources, resolved itself into two parts: first the opening of the Mississippi to the Gulf, incidentally cutting off Missouri, Arkansas and Texas, and the control of the great state of Georgia, the heart of the confederacy.

By a series of hard campaigns of varying fortune the union army found itself in 1863 in control of the Mississippi up and down except at Vicksburg. Grant, who had fought his way to the command of the army of the west, set himself to the task of taking this point. The city, which is on a high bluff,