Army had suffered from the defeats it had sustained in the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, fought in the preceding months of December and April, respectively, while that of the Confederate Army had reached the highest point that it attained in the course of the war." General Joseph Hooker now commanded the Army of the Potomac.

The Confederacy had resorted to obligatory service, and Lee's army was at once increased by a large force of conscripts so that by the end of May he had 76,224 men and 272 guns. Urged by political as well as military reasons the authorities. of the Confederate Government decided upon an offensive campaign for the year 1863 and early in June Lee's army began its movement northward which terminated in the great battle of Gettysburg, fought during the first three days of July.

When Lee moved from his position behind the Rappahannock, Hooker started in pursuit but, having lost the confidence of the Government at Washington, he was relieved on the 28th of June and the command of the Army of the Potomac then fell to General George Gordon Meade who commanded it during the battle of Gettysburg and in the subsequent operations.

In the meantime there had been developing on the battlefields of the West a man of genius, for whom the hour had now arrived.

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In February, 1864, Congress revived the grade of lieutenant general, which had last been held in the American Army by Washington in 1799. The President appointed Major General Ulysses S. Grant to the office and made him general in chief of all the Union armies-and personally gave him assurance that he was to be allowed to exercise the real functions of the office.

"Then, for the first time since the war began, a definite plan of action was laid out for the armies of the United States-a plan that contemplated the simultaneous and concerted movement of all the armies in the vast theater of the war toward a single ultimate objective; namely, the destruction of the only two organized armed bodies of any considerable strength that the Confederacy had in the field. Those two bodies were Lee's army in Virginia and the force then under General Joseph E. Johnston at Darlton, Georgia.

The stories of the battles of the Wilderness, the siege of Petersburg, and General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on the 9th of April, 1865, are too well known to require recounting.

From the very brief review which our space has permitted, it is obvious that "the time required for the training of extemporized armies depends largely on the presence or absence of trained instructors.

"If there be a corps of trained officers and non-commissioned officers and a tested organization of higher units with trained leaders and staff officers, the problem of training is limited to the training of the private soldier. This can be accomplished in a relatively short time, and under such conditions if arms and equipment are available a respectable army can be formed within six months. But where the leaders themselves are untrained and where officers and men must alike stumble toward efficiency without intelligent guidance, the formation of an efficient army is a question of years. Indeed such a force cannot become an army at all within the period of duration of modern wars.

"As the American war of 1861-1865 presents the singular phenomenon of two extemporized armies gradually developing while in conflict with each other, it is a most remarkable record of the evolution of such forces.

"In the conflicts of 1861 both officers and men were untrained for the duties demanded of them. Even the companies were imperfectly organized as units of the regiment, the lack of cohesion was still more apparent in the higher units. Bull Run disorganized both armies. One was remoralized by defeat and the other by victory.

"By 1862 effective regiments, brigades, and divisions had come into being, but the conduct and leading of higher units as a rule was still imperfect. It was not until 1863 that the armies confronted each other as complete and effective military

machines. But even in the early stages of the war the influence of trained and able leaders was apparent.

"The time required to make an effective soldier depends very largely on the organization in which the recruit is enrolled." The recruit of 1861 could not become a good soldier until his captain became a good captain, but the recruit of 1863 was absorbed in a team already trained, and therefore became a trained soldier in a few months of active service. But while the history of the Civil War is instructive as a record of military evolution it cannot be invoked as a guide of military policy, for we can count upon it that in our career as a world power no serious competitor will ever oppose us with extemporized armies.

"In view of these considerations it is obvious that the citizen soldier must have some training in peace if he is to be effective in the sudden crisis of modern war. The organization in which he is to serve must exist and function in time of peace, and in view of the limited time available for training it should be a fundamental principle of American policy that no officer should be intrusted with the leadership of American soldiers who has not prepared himself for that responsibility in time of peace. The American soldier, whether regular or volunteer, is entitled to trained leadership in war."

THIRTEENTH LESSON.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MILITARY RESOURCES AND MILITARY POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES-1898 TO 1914.

Aftermath of the Civil War: State of Preparedness.

"The conclusion of the Civil War found the United States for the first and only time in its history—prepared for war."

In point of view of the numbers of officers and men trained in the duties of the soldier; in the kinds, quality, and quantities of military stores on hand and available for immediate use; in the availability of experienced and intelligent leaders, both in the military and civil departments of government, and in the morale of the Government and the major portion of the population, the United States had little if any thing to ask for.

The nation, as well as the army, having passed through four years of war in which its resources, spiritual as well as material, had been tried to the limit of endurance, had learnt its own weakness and strength. It knew-as never before— how to make war. The governmental institutions had been tested in the crucible of civil war and had emerged with a new and finer temper.

The United States in 1865 was potentially the mistress of the American continent by sheer virtue of her dynamic and spiritual prestige. She was, so far as the destinies of the American nations were concerned, the greatest single guarantee of peace existing in the world, because-being thoroughly prepared for war-she was able to effectively impose her will for the preservation of peace. Nor was it necessary under these circumstances for the Government of the United States to do more than use the moral influence of the nation, in order to secure the integrity of the neighboring American states, as was evidenced by Napoleon's prompt evacuation of Mexico upon the request of this Government.

She had in her Regular Army in 1866, 33,490 officers and men who had been trained in the greatest school of war-war itself. She had commanders of high rank and proven ability. She had an abundance of skillful subordinate commanders and staff officers and a military organization which had been evolved after numerous experiments and changes into a perfectly coordinated and smoothly running military machine. Aside from these advantages, and what is of still greater importance, she had a great reserve of citizens trained in the art of war-thanks to the recognition of the universal obligation to perform military service, that had been forced upon the public conscience by the exigencies of the war.

For all of this the nation had paid a price:

1. In human life:

Killed and died of wounds, Federal troops..
Killed and died of wounds, Confederate troops..

Total killed and died of wounds....

2. In treasure:

Cost of maintenance of the military establishment,
1861-1865

3. Additional, economic, loss:

.$2,736,570,923.50

The further economic loss, due to deterioration and destruction of private property; retarded commercial, industrial, and agricultural development; diminished man-power resource, due to wounds and disease not resulting in death, and the addition to the nation's pension rolls of thousands of disabled soldiers as well as widows and orphans, is incalculable.

The survey just given of the state of military preparedness of the nation at the end of the Civil War shows a condition bright with the possibilities for a safe, sane, and adequate military policy for subsequent years. From it we turn with interest and anticipation only to find that no sooner was the situation in Mexico cleared up by the withdrawal of the French troops, than did Congress revert to its old policy of reducing the army, discarding the advantages gained and the lessons learned from costly experience, and leaving the nation again in a state of military retrogression. The Regular Army, what there was of it, was widely scattered along the frontiers, in distant military posts in the North and West. Nowhere were sufficient troops brought together to enable our generals to get the practice in maneuver which is necessary to their efficiency and for the development of subordinate commanders. Military education was neglected, military progress ceased and the army entered upon a period of "dry rot" from the monotony of which relief came only in occasional Indian uprisings. The work of the army during the period from the close of the Civil War to the outbreak of the war with Spain was characterized by the policing of the growing West. "Its history during that period is full of local interest and much valuable assistance was rendered to the pioneer communities, but so far as military organization goes the army did not deserve the term and its functions might have been as well performed by a constabulary." Promotion was slow and officers arrived at higher command grades only after they had become too old to efficiently perform their functions. Year after year went by and made this condition worse and more dangerous, for each succeeding year brought the nation closer and closer to the possibility of another war, which came at last, as it inevitably will when a system of neglect renders the armed strength of the people impotent. It found the United States now grown to a great industrial and commercial nation, again, unprepared for war.

In one sense only may the United States be said to have been prepared for the war with Spain, and that is it had the people behind it. There was a popular cry for intervention in Cuba. That the war entailed consequences reaching far beyond the horizon of popular imagination, bringing the nation as it did to the threshold of world politics, evidences the possibilities into which a government may be plunged not by military preparedness, not by an intelligent education of the people in the nature and requirements of war, but by a persistent education of the population in the doctrine of unpreparedness and a general ignorance of the relations of military strategy to political strategy. It is not our purpose to discuss the political aspects of the war with Spain. Whether the Government of the United Sates had wished o engage in war in 1918, or not, it would have been very difficult, if not dangerous or even impossible, to resist a demand for intervention in a cause popularly conceived to be a righteous crusade in the name of humanity. Governments have from time to * Estimated on basis of per cent of same class of casualties in federal forces.

time found themselves forced to enter upon a foreign war, not from motives of conquest or for national defense, but by the force of public opinion arising within their own domains.

The condition of the United States at the time of the declaration of war against the Spanish Government was one of military disorganization and unpreparedness. As one high authority has stated it, "on every side was lack of well-thought-out preparedness. A clumsy, bureaucratic system of administration crumbled under the first pressure which was put upon it; the sanitary administration of our camps showed in many instances lack of elementary knowledge and reasonable prudence, and an entire want of discipline. There were some marked exceptions, but generally speaking, sanitary incompetence, together with administrative failure, served to give us a death list many times greater than that from bullets."

The state of supply and equipment was hardly better than the administrative organization of the army. Troops were sent into a tropical climate wearing a woolen uniform of a style only suitable for garrison duty in a cool climate and of a color so conspicuous that it made the wearer a ready mark for the Spanish infantry and artillery. While the Regular Army had previously been equipped with a modern magazine rifle using a smokeless powder, there were instances of volunteer troops going into action, carrying an old-fashioned rifle of heavy caliber using a cartridge loaded with black powder, against the Spanish infantry who were armed with a Mauser, a highly efficient weapon of that period. The same dread disease which had caused General Scott to hasten away from the Tierra Caliente in 1846 and to make every effort to gain the healthier altitudes away from the Mexican coast, seized upon the American Army even while it was besieging Santiago and the deadly vomito," or yellow fever, smote right and left.

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A sober consideration of the circumstances attending the Spanish-American War induces the belief that nothing but the greater military incompetence of the Spanish Government saved the people of the United States from a retribution from which they would have recoiled with horror and mortification. Within the course of six short months the military power of an enlightened nation of over 63,000,000 population, was hurled precipitately against the armed strength of a third- or fourth-rate military power at a place far distant from its source of recruitment and supply, and was cast back upon the shores of the United States stricken with disease, disorganized and all but disheartened. That this state of affairs did not make a very deep impression on the public mind was due to the relatively small numbers of troops employed and the fact that public interest in the meantime had become centered on the results of naval operations in the Far East and the ensuing campaigns in the Philippine Islands.

Nothing of military value is to be learned from the latter operations. Mention of them serves to recall the fact of our embarkation upon a course, the initiation of which drew our interests close to crossing those of Germany and the continuation of which has carried us ever further into the spheres of the world powers.

As shown by the chart found at the end of this lesson (Plate 27), the average duration of all periods of peace in the history of the United States, from 1774 to the close of the Philippines Insurrection, 1902, has been 20 years. With the long period, 33 years, of peace following the Civil War the conclusion might have been justified in 1895 that the previous history of the country as to the duration of intervals of peace was no longer to be the criterion and that we were as a nation due for a prolonged peace of indefinite extent. An examination of the facts shows that in 1797, during the peace following the Revolution, we were threatened with a war with France. Immediately following the Civil War our state of military preparedness averted a war with Napoleon. In 1895 we were engaged in a dispute with Great Britain over the Venezuela question that seemed to threaten war. All of our periods of peace have been marked by Indian outbreaks requiring the employment of military force by the Government. In times of peace the military power of the national government has been invoked by the governors of states upon many occasions, for the restoration or preservation of order where the ordinary means of

government have not availed. The student is able to make his own deduction as to the reasonable conclusion to be withdrawn from a prolonged peace as to the probability or improbability of the recurrence of war.

Incidences of the Spanish-American War were reminiscent of one of the gravest characteristics of the Government's conduct of the campaigns of 1861 and 1862. There was little or nothing to be apprehended of an invasion of our territory by the Spanish Army but of the whereabouts of the Spanish fleet there was a lack of definite information and as it became known that the fleet had left Spain for an unknown destination a great fear seized upon various coast cities and towns out of which grew a demand for local protection. A similar situation, it will be recalled, led to the detaching of Blenker's division from the Army of the Potomac just as it was entering upon the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, which event was recorded by Upton as the beginning of the disintegration of the army." It requires no great knowledge of military affairs to comprehend what such practices may lead to, and it is worthy of note that our Government in 1898 was able to resist the pressure which, had it been yielded to, could easily have resulted in the dispersion of our fleet and a purposeless frittering away of our naval strength that would have left our eastern coasts open to Cervera's fleet.

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"For many years preceding the war with Spain, Congress had been urged to make adequate provision for the protection of our sea-coasts, but it had been so tardy in doing so that, when the war broke out, the condition of our coast defenses was far from satisfactory. A very few modern guns of high power had been placed in position. It is true that much work was in progress, but it takes years to construct guns and to build emplacements for them and what still remained to be done at that time required many months. If suddenly attacked by a first-class sea power, most of our ports would have been practically helpless. But even had the sea-coast defenses been all that could have been desired, there was yet lacking the most important element of all-troops to defend the rear of the coast defenses. It is

only desired to point out the general state of decay into which our national defense had fallen in 1898 and that it was a realization of that fact by the portion of the population most directly affected by the war with Spain-the eastern coast-which subsequently led to a gradual improvement in some of the conditions from which the national defense suffered."

The tremendous decadence in our military system from the year 1865 to the year 1898 cannot fail to raise several significant questions:

Having, at the end of the Civil War, a great abundance of military strength developed from the national military resources, would it not have been the part of wisdom for our Congress to establish a military policy adapted to the maintenance of an equitable military establishment whose function would be to perpetuate the preparedness then existing by providing a corps of trained instructors for the military training of on-coming generations of American manhood?

Having available such an accumulation of experienced knowledge, should not our Congress have provided for a progressive system of military education for the officers