Towards An American Army by Russell F. Weigley

Author:Russell F. Weigley [Weigley, Russell F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Wars & Conflicts (Other), United States, 20th Century, Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9781786258229
Google: OUSQCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-01-27T17:44:38+00:00

IX—THE DISCIPLES OF EMORY UPTON

“As the Congress has so utterly failed to properly provide for a “well-regulated militia” or national guard, it might naturally be ex-expected that due provision has been made for some other military force, as represented by the regular armies of modern nations.”—A. D. SCHENCK

“Lulled to sleep in fancied security, confident that our great wealth and numbers have made us unconquerable, our energies are devoted to trade and the arts of peace, and we have no time to devote to the consideration of possible disasters.”—JAMES S. PETTIT

NOT only did the United States in the post-Civil War era lack plans for the mobilization of a wartime military reserve, either of an Uptonian professional type or a Loganian citizen-soldier type; the regular army itself was faulty, unprogressive, and small. The instrument upon which Emory Upton hoped to build a better military policy was itself not a model of military efficiency, and for this reason the pessimism of Upton’s writing was deep and the pessimism of his followers deeper still.

The regular army after 1876 had an authorized strength of 25,000, but it usually numbered somewhat less. It was organized into five regiments of artillery, ten of cavalry, twenty-five of infantry, a battalion of engineers, and the cadets of the Military Academy. The soldiers were scattered along the seacoasts and mainly across the vastness of the West. Rarely did the companies of a single regiment unite. As late as 1895 the commanding general of the army was still pleading in vain for the permanent concentration of at least one full regiment of cavalry at Fort Riley, Kansas, for the purpose of holding regimental maneuvers. Even on paper, the army was merely a conglomeration of regiments; no corps or divisional organization existed. Strategic and logistical planning was practically unknown, either for defensive war or for some conflict that might involve the dispatch of an expeditionary force overseas (such as the Cuban insurrection of 1868-1878 suggested might occur).{277}

Even tactical arrangements within the regiments were faulty. Emory Upton had been correct in his call for the abolition of the single-battalion infantry regiment, a clumsy mass which open-order fighting made impractical to maneuver effectively; but despite the fact that every commanding general from Sherman onward agreed with Upton, the unwieldy single-battalion regiment remained to fight the Spanish War. Organizationally the cavalry regiments were in a better pass, but the five regiments of artillery suffered from a complete lack of regimental cohesion and from haphazard assignment to duties from seacoast to field to infantry service.{278}

The army displayed a hardening of the arteries. While many of its officers, Sherman and numerous junior officers, sought to keep abreast of new developments in the art of war, too many who had served against the Confederacy seemed unable to escape infatuation with the methods of the Civil War and were blinded to the worth of improvements.

The Civil War quartermaster general, M. C. Meigs, for example, clung to his post until 1882, and he resisted organizational improvements in his department with an attitude that was characteristic of many of his colleagues.

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