The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864

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I close these papers, with my eye resting upon the same stretch of
fields,--the wooded border of a river,--the twinkling roofs and spires
flanked by hills and sea,--where my eye rested when I began this story
of the old masters with Hesiod and the bean-patches of Ithaca. And I
take a pleasure in feeling that the farm-practice over all the fields
below me rests upon the cumulated authorship of so long a line of
teachers. Yon open furrow, over which the herbage has closed, carries
trace of the ridging in the "Works and Days"; the brown field of
half-broken clods is the fallow ([Greek: Neos]) of Xenophon; the drills
belong to Worlidge; their culture with the horse-hoe is at the order of
Master Tull. Young and Cobbett are full of their suggestions; Lancelot
Brown has ordered away a great straggling hedge-row; and Sir Uvedale
Price has urged me to spare a hoary maple which lords it over a
half-acre of flat land. Cato gives orders for the asparagus, and Switzer
for the hot-beds. Crescenzi directs the walling, and Smith of Deanston
the ploughing. Burns embalms all my field-mice, and Cowper drapes an urn
for me in a tangled wilderness. Knight names my cherries, and Walton,
the kind master, goes with me over the hill to a wee brook that bounds
down under hemlocks and soft maples, for "a contemplative man's
recreation." Davy long ago caught all the fermentation of my manure-heap
in his retort, and Thomson painted for me the scene which is under my
window to-day. Mowbray cures the pip in my poultry, and all the songs of
all the birds are caught and repeated to the echo in the pages of the
poets which lie here under my hand; through the prism of their verse,
Patrick the cattle-tender changes to a lithe milkmaid, against whose
ankles the buttercups nod rejoicingly, and Rosamund (which is the nurse)
wakes all Arden (which is Edgewood) with a rich burst of laughter.

And shall I not be grateful to these my patrons? And shall I count it
unworthy to pass these few in-door hours of rain in the emblazonment of
their titles?

Nor must I forget here to express my indebtedness to those kind friends
who have from time to time favored me with suggestions or corrections,
in the course of these papers, and to those others--not a few--who have
lent me rare old books of husbandry, which are not easily laid hold of.

I have discussed no works of living authors, whether of practical or
pastoral intent: at some future day I may possibly pay my compliments to
them. Meantime I cannot help interpolating in the interest of my readers
a little fragment of a letter addressed to me within the year by the
lamented Hawthorne:--"I remember long ago your speaking prospectively of
a farm; but I never dreamed of your being really much more of a farmer
than myself, whose efforts in that line only make me the father of a
progeny of weeds in a garden-patch. I have about twenty-five acres of
land, seventeen of which are a hill of sand and gravel, wooded with
birches, locusts, and pitch-pines, and apparently incapable of any other
growth; so that I have great comfort in that part of my territory. The
other eight acres are said to be the best land in Concord, and they have
made me miserable, and would soon have ruined me, if I had not
determined nevermore to attempt raising anything from them. So there
they lie along the roadside, within their broken fence, an eyesore to
me, and a laughing-stock to all the neighbors. If it were not for the
difficulty of transportation by express or otherwise, I would thankfully
give you those eight acres."

And now the fine, nervous hand, which wrought with such strange power
and beauty, is stilled forever! The eight acres can well lie neglected;
for upon a broader field, as large as humanity, and at the hands of
thousands of reapers who worked for love, he has gathered in a great
harvest of _immortelles_.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] _Life of Sir Humphry Davy_, London, 1839, p. 46.

[28] See letter of Thomas Poole, p. 322, _Fragmentary Remains of Sir
Humphry Davy_.

[29] _Salmonia_, p. 5, London, Murray, 1851.

[30] _Fragmentary Remains_, p. 242.

[31] _Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine._

[32] _Agricultural Biography_, etc. London, 1854. _Printed for the
Author._

[33] I ought, perhaps, to make definite exception in the case of a
writer so universally accredited. In his "Encyclopaedia of Gardening," he
speaks of the "Geoponica" as the work of "modern Greeks," written after
the transfer of the seat of empire to Constantinople; whereas the bulk
of those treatises were written long before that date. He speaks of
Varro as first in order of time of Roman authors on agriculture; yet
Varro was born 116 B. C., and Cato died as early as 149 B. C. Crescenzi
he names as an author of the fifteenth century; he should be credited to
the fourteenth. He also commits the very common error in writers on
gardening, of confounding the Tuscan villa of Pliny with that at
Tusculum. These two places of the Roman Consul were entirely distinct
and unlike.

[34] _Lord Byron and his Contemporaries_, Vol. II. p. 258.

REGULAR AND VOLUNTEER OFFICERS.

It is pleasant to see how much the present war has done towards effacing
the traditional jealousy between regular officers and volunteers. The
two classes have been so thoroughly intermingled, on staff-duties and in
the field,--so many regular officers now hold in the volunteer service a
rank higher than their permanent standing,--the whole previous military
experience of most regulars was so trifling, compared with that which
they and the volunteers have now shared in common,--and so many young
men have lately been appointed to commissions, in both branches, not
only without a West-Point education, but with almost none at all,--that
it really cannot be said that there is much feeling of conscious
separation left. For treating the two as antagonistic the time has
clearly gone by. For judiciously weighing their respective services in
the field the epoch has not come, since the reign of history begins only
when that of telegrams and special correspondents has ended. It is
better, therefore, to limit the comparison, as yet, to that minor
routine of military duty upon which the daily existence of an army
depends, and of which the great deeds of daring are merely exciting
episodes.

At the beginning of the war, and before the distinction was thus
partially effaced, the comparison involved very different elements. In
our general military inexperience, the majority were not disposed to
underrate the value of specific professional training. Education holds
in this country much of the prestige held by hereditary rank in Europe,
modified only by the condition that the possessor shall take no undue
airs upon himself. Even then the penalty consists only in a few
outbreaks of superficial jealousy, and the substantial respect for any
real acquirements remains the same. So there was a time when the
faintest aroma of West Point lent a charm to the most unattractive
candidate for a commission. Any Governor felt a certain relief in
intrusting a regiment to any man who had ever eaten clandestine oysters
at Benny Haven's, or had once heard the whiz of an Indian arrow on the
frontier, however mediocre might have been all his other claims to
confidence. If he failed, the regular army might bear the shame; if he
succeeded, to the State-House be the glory.

Yet there was always another party of critics, not less intelligent, who
urged the value of general preparations for any duty, as compared with
special,--who held that it was always easier for a man of brains to
acquire technical skill than for a person of mere technicality to
superadd brains, and that the antecedents of a frontier lieutenant were,
on the whole, a poorer training for large responsibilities than those of
many a civilian, who had lived in the midst of men, though out of
uniform. Let us have a fair statement of this position, for it was very
sincere and had much temporary influence. The main thing, it was argued,
was the knowledge of human nature and the habit of dealing with mankind
in masses,--the very thing from which the younger regular officers at
least had been rigidly excluded. From a monastic life at West Point they
had usually been transferred to a yet more isolated condition, in some
obscure outpost,--or if otherwise, then they had seen no service at all,
and were mere clerks in shoulder-straps. But a lawyer who could
manoeuvre fifty witnesses as if they were one,--a teacher used to
governing young men by the hundred,--an orator trained to sway
thousands,--a master-mechanic,--a railway-superintendent,--a
factory-agent,--a broker who could harness Wall Street and drive it,--a
financier who could rule a sovereign State with a rod of (railway)
iron,--such men as these, it was plausibly reasoned, could give an
average army-officer all the advantage of his special training, at the
start, and yet beat him at his own trade in a year.

These theories were naturally strengthened, moreover, by occasional
instances of conspicuous failure, when volunteer troops were intrusted
to regular officers. These disappointments could usually be traced to
very plain causes. The men selected were sometimes men whose West-Point
career would hardly bear minute investigation,--or who had in civil
pursuits forgotten all they had learned at the Academy, except
self-esteem,--or who had been confined to the duties of some special
department, as quartermasters or paymasters, and were really fitted for
nothing else,--or who had served their country by resigning their
commissions, if not by holding them,--or who had contrived, first or
last, to lose hopelessly their tempers or their digestions, or their
faith, hope, and charity. Beyond all this lay the trouble, that the best
regular officer from the very fact of his superior training was puzzled
to know how much to demand of volunteer troops, or what standard to
enforce upon them. It was a problem in the Differential Calculus, with
the Army Regulations for a constant, and a raw volunteer regiment for a
variable, and not a formula in Davies which suited the purpose.
Unfortunately, these perplexities were quite as apt to end in relaxation
as in rigor, so that the regiments thus commanded sometimes slid into a
looseness of which a resolute volunteer officer would have been ashamed.

These were among the earlier results. Against them was to be set the
fact, that, on the whole, no regiments in the field made progress so
rapid, or held their own so well, as those placed under regular
officers. And now that three years have abolished many surmises, and
turned many others into established facts, it must be owned that the
total value of the professional training has proved far greater, and
that of the general preparation far less, than many intelligent
observers predicted. The relation between officer and soldier is
something so different in kind from anything which civil life has to
offer, that it has proved almost impossible to transfer methods or
maxims from the one to the other. If a regiment is merely a caucus, and
the colonel the chairman,--or merely a fire-company, and the colonel the
foreman,--or merely a prayer-meeting, and the colonel the moderator,--or
merely a bar-room, and the colonel the landlord,--then the failure of
the whole thing is a foregone conclusion. War is not the highest of
human pursuits, certainly; but an army comes very near to being the
completest of human organizations, and he alone succeeds in it who
readily accepts its inevitable laws, and applies them. An army is an
aristocracy, on a three-years' lease, supposing that the period of
enlistment. No mortal skill can make military power effective on
democratic principles. A democratic people can perhaps carry on a war
longer and better than any other; because no other can so well
comprehend the object, raise the means, or bear the sacrifices. But
these sacrifices include the surrender, for the time being, of the
essential principle of the government. Personal independence in the
soldier, like personal liberty in the civilian, must be waived for the
preservation of the nation. With shipwreck staring men in the face, the
choice lies between despotism and anarchy, trusting to the common sense
of those concerned, when the danger is over, to revert to the old
safeguards. It is precisely because democracy is an advanced stage in
human society, that war, which belongs to a less advanced stage, is
peculiarly inconsistent with its habits. Thus the undemocratic
character, so often lamented in West Point and Annapolis, is in reality
their strong point. Granted that they are no more appropriate to our
stage of society than are revolvers and bowie-knives, that is precisely
what makes them all serviceable in time of war. War being exceptional,
the institutions which train its officers must be exceptional likewise.

The first essential for military authority lies in the power of
command,--a power which it is useless to analyze, for it is felt
instinctively, and it is seen in its results. It is hardly too much to
say, that, in military service, if one has this power, all else becomes
secondary; and it is perfectly safe to say that without it all other
gifts are useless. Now for the exercise of power there is no preparation
like power, and nowhere is this preparation to be found, in this
community, except in regular army-training. Nothing but great personal
qualities can give a man by nature what is easily acquired by young men
of very average ability who are systematically trained to command.

The criticism habitually made upon our army by foreign observers at the
beginning of the war continues still to be made, though in a rather less
degree,--that the soldiers are relatively superior to the officers, so
that the officers lead, perhaps, but do not command them. The reason is
plain. Three years are not long enough to overcome the settled habits of
twenty years. The weak point of our volunteer service invariably lies
here, that the soldier, in nine cases out of ten, utterly detests being
commanded, while the officer, in his turn, equally shrinks from
commanding. War, to both, is an episode in life, not a profession, and
therefore military subordination, which needs for its efficiency to be
fixed and absolute, is, by common consent, reduced to a minimum. The
white American soldier, being, doubtless, the most intelligent in the
world, is more ready than any other to comply with a reasonable order,
but he does it because it is reasonable, not because it is an order.
With advancing experience his compliance increases, but it is still
because he better and better comprehends the reason. Give him an order
that looks utterly unreasonable,--and this is sometimes necessary,--or
give him one which looks trifling, under which head all sanitary
precautions are yet too apt to rank, and you may, perhaps, find that you
still have a free and independent citizen to deal with, not a soldier.
_Implicit_ obedience must be admitted still to be a rare quality in our
army; nor can we wonder at it. In many cases there is really no more
difference between officers and men, in education or in breeding, than
if the one class were chosen by lot from the other; all are from the
same neighborhood, all will return to the same civil pursuits side by
side; every officer knows that in a little while each soldier will again
become his client or his customer, his constituent or his rival. Shall
he risk offending him for life in order to carry out some hobby of
stricter discipline? If this difficulty exist in the case of
commissioned officers, it is still more the case with the
non-commissioned, those essential intermediate links in the chain of
authority. Hence the discipline of our soldiers has been generally that
of a town-meeting or of an engine-company, rather than that of an army;
and it shows the extraordinary quality of the individual men, that so
much has been accomplished with such a formidable defect in the
organization. Even granting that there has been a great and constant
improvement, the evil is still vast enough. And every young man trained
at West Point enters the service with at least this advantage, that he
has been brought up to command, and has not that task to learn.

He has this further advantage, that he is brought up with some respect
for the army-organization as it is, with its existing rules, methods,
and proprieties, and is not, like the newly commissioned civilian,
disposed in his secret soul to set aside all its proprieties as mere
"pipe-clay," its methods as "old-fogyism," and its rules as "red-tape."
How many good volunteer officers will admit, if they speak candidly,
that on entering the service they half believed the "Army Regulations"
to be a mass of old-time rubbish, which they would gladly reedit, under
contract, with immense improvements, in a month or two,--and that they
finally left the service with the conviction that the same book was a
mine of wisdom, as yet but half explored! Certainly, when one thinks
for what a handful of an army our present military system was devised,
and with what an admirable elasticity it has borne this sudden and
stupendous expansion, it must be admitted to have most admirably stood
the test. Of course, there has been much amendment and alteration
needed, nor is the work done yet; but it has mainly touched the details,
not the general principles. The system is wonderfully complete for its
own ends, and the more one studies it the less one sneers. Many a form
which at first seems to the volunteer officer merely cumbrous and
trivial he learns to prize at last as almost essential to good
discipline; he seldom attempts a short cut without finding it the
longest way, and rarely enters on that heroic measure of cutting
red-tape without finding at last that he has entangled his own fingers
in the process.

More thorough training tells in another way. It is hard to appreciate,
without the actual experience, how much of military life is a matter of
mere detail. The maiden at home fancies her lover charging at the head
of his company, when in reality he is at that precise moment endeavoring
to convince his company-cooks that salt-junk needs five hours' boiling,
or is anxiously deciding which pair of worn-out trousers shall be
ejected from a drummer-boy's knapsack. Courage is, no doubt, a good
quality in a soldier, and luckily not often wanting; but, in the long
run, courage depends largely on the haversack. Men are naturally brave,
and when the crisis comes, almost all men will fight well, if well
commanded. As Sir Philip Sidney said, an army of stags led by a lion is
more formidable than an army of lions led by a stag. Courage is cheap;
the main duty of an officer is to take good care of his men, so that
every one of them shall be ready, at a moment's notice, for any
reasonable demand. A soldier's life usually implies weeks and months of
waiting, and then one glorious hour; and if the interval of leisure has
been wasted, there is nothing but a wasted heroism at the end, and
perhaps not even that. The penalty for misused weeks, the reward for
laborious months, may be determined within ten minutes. Without
discipline an army is a mob, and the larger the worse; without rations
the men are empty uniforms; without ammunition they might as well have
no guns; without shoes they might almost as well have no legs. And it is
in the practical appreciation of all these matters that the superiority
of the regular officer is apt to be shown.

Almost any honest volunteer officer will admit, that, although the
tactics were easily learned, yet, in dealing with all other practical
details of army-life, he was obliged to gain his knowledge through many
blunders. There were a thousand points on which the light of Nature,
even aided by "Army Regulations," did not sufficiently instruct him; and
his best hints were probably obtained by frankly consulting regular
officers, even if inferior in rank. The advantage of a West-Point
training is precisely that of any other professional education. There is
nothing in it which any intelligent man cannot learn for himself in
later life; nevertheless, the intelligent man would have fared a good
deal better, had he learned it all in advance. Test it by shifting the
positions. No lawyer would trust his case to a West-Point graduate,
without evidence of thorough special preparation. Yet he himself enters
on a career equally new to him, where his clients may be counted by
thousands, and every case is capital. The army is a foreign country to
civilians; of course you can learn the language after your arrival, but
how you envy your companion, who, having spoken it from childhood, can
proceed at once to matters more important!

Yet the great advantage of the regular army does not, after all, consist
merely in any superiority of knowledge, or in the trained habit of
command. Granting that patience and labor can readily supply these to
the volunteer, the trouble remains, that even in labor and patience the
regular officer is apt to have the advantage, by reason of a stronger
stimulus. The difference is not merely in the start, but in the pace. No
man can be often thrown into the society of regular officers, especially
among the younger ones, without noticing a higher standard of
professional earnestness than that found among average volunteers; and
in this respect a West-Point training makes little or no difference. The
reason of the superiority is obvious. To the volunteer, the service is
still an episode; to the regular, a permanent career. No doubt, if a man
is thoroughly conscientious, or thoroughly ambitious, or thoroughly
enthusiastic, a temporary pursuit may prove as absorbing as if it were
taken up for life; but the majority of men, however well-meaning, are
not thorough at all. How often one hears the apology made by volunteer
officers, even those of high rank,--"Military life is not my profession;
I entered the army from patriotism, willing to serve my country
faithfully for three years, but of course not pretending to perfection
in every trivial detail of a pursuit which I shall soon quit forever."
But it is patriotism to think the details _not_ trivial. If one gives
one's self to one's country, let the gift be total and noble. These
details are worthy to absorb the whole daily thought, and they should
absorb it, until more thorough comprehension and more matured executive
power leave room for larger studies, still in the line of the adopted
occupation. If a man leaves his office or his study to be a soldier, let
him be a soldier in earnest. Let those three years bound the horizon of
his plans, and let him study his new duty as if earth offered no other
conceivable career. The scholar must forswear his pen, the lawyer his
books, the politician his arts. An officer of whatever rank, who does
not find occupation enough for every day, amid the quietest
winter-quarters, in the prescribed duties of his position and the
studies to which they should lead, is fitted only for civil pursuits,
and had better return to them.

Without this thoroughness, life in the army affords no solid
contentment. What is called military glory is a fitful and uncertain
thing. Time and the newspapers play strange tricks with reputations, and
of a hundred officers whose names appear with honor in this morning's
despatches ninety may never be mentioned again till it is time to write
their epitaphs. Who, for instance, can recite the names of the
successive cavalry-commanders who have ridden on their bold forays
through Virginia, since the war began? All must give place to the latest
Kautz or Sheridan, who has eclipsed without excelling them all. Yet each
is as brave and as faithful to-day, no doubt, as when he too glittered
for his hour before all men's gaze, and the obscurer duty may be the
more substantial honor. So when I lift my eyes to look on yonder level
ocean-floor, the fitful sunshine now glimmers white on one far-off sail,
now on another; and yet I know that all canvas looks snowy while those
casual rays are on it, and that the best vessel is that which, sunlit or
shaded, best accomplishes its destined course. The officer is almost as
powerless as the soldier to choose his opportunity or his place.
Military glory may depend on a thousand things,--the accident of local
position, the jealousy of a rival, the whim of a superior. But the merit
of having done one's whole duty to the men whose lives are in one's
keeping, and to the nation whose life is staked with theirs,--of having
held one's command in such a state, that, if at any given moment it was
not performing the most brilliant achievement, it might have been,--this
is the substantial triumph which every faithful officer has always
within reach.

Now will any one but a newspaper flatterer venture to say that this is
the habitual standard in our volunteer service? Take as a test the
manner in which official inspections are usually regarded by a
regimental commander. These occasions are to him what examinations by
the School Committee are to a public-school teacher. He may either
deprecate and dodge them, or he may manfully welcome them as the very
best means of improvement for all under his care. Which is the more
common view? What sight more pitiable than to behold an officer begging
off from inspection because he has just come in from picket, or is just
going out on picket, or has just removed camp, or was a day too late
with his last requisition for cartridges? No doubt it is a trying ordeal
to have some young regular-army lieutenant ride up to your tent at an
hour's notice, and leisurely devote a day to probing every weak spot in
your command,--to stand by while he smells at every camp-kettle, detects
every delinquent gun-sling, ferrets out old shoes from behind the
mess-bunks, spies out every tent-pole not labelled with the sergeant's
name, asks to see the cash-balance of each company-fund, and perplexes
your best captain on forming from two ranks into one by the left flank.
Yet it is just such unpleasant processes as these which are the
salvation of an army; these petty mortifications are the fulcrum by
which you can lift your whole regiment to a first-class rank, if you
have only the sense to use them. So long as no inspecting officer needs
twice to remind you of the same thing, you have no need to blush. But
though you be the bravest of the brave, though you know a thousand
things of which he is utterly ignorant, yet so long as he can tell you
one thing which you ought to know, he is master of the situation. He may
be the most conceited little popinjay who ever strutted in uniform; no
matter; it is more for your interest to learn than for his to teach. Let
our volunteer officers, as a body, once resolve to act on this
principle, and we shall have such an army as the world never saw. But
nothing costs the nation a price so fearful, in money or in men, as the
false pride which shrinks from these necessary surgical operations, or
regards the surgeon as a foe.

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