Nor did the enlisted complement rise above mediocrity. The army offered few incentives to attract recruits of high caliber. Pay ranged from $13 a month for privates to $22 for line sergeants.62 On the frontier the paymaster arrived infrequently, and then paid in currency that had to be converted to specie at a discount.63 Superior performance brought few rewards.64 Most civilians looked upon soldiers with condescension if not contempt. Execrable living conditions and harsh discipline scarcely enhanced the attraction of the ranks. Not until the 1890s, after the Indian Wars, did reforms make military life more agreeable.
Gone, therefore, were the legions of fresh young men fired by a sense of mission to save the Union. The postwar regular ranks filled with recruits of a lower order of intelligence, physical fitness, and motivation. The New York Sun’s charge that “the Regular Army is composed of bummers, loafers, and foreign paupers”65 was only partially accurate; there were other undesirables as well: criminals, brutes, perverts, and drunkards, to name a few. But there were also active youths seeking adventure, men of varying ability fleeing misfortune, and “foreign paupers” who turned out to be excellent soldiers. Moreover, in times of national depression such as followed the Panic of 1873, the quality of recruits rose notably if only temporarily. Nevertheless, as General Ord observed in 1872, while the government had developed a greatly improved rifle, “I rather think we have a much less intelligent soldier to handle it.”66
The enlisted force represented widely varying social and economic backgrounds. Reflecting the location of the recruiting depots, however, it drew heavily on the urban poor. A scattering of skilled tradesmen could be found in most units, but unskilled laborers predominated. Of 7,734 enlistees in 1882, for example, 2,373 identified themselves as laborers, 838 as soldiers, and 668 as farmers. There were also substantial numbers of teamsters, clerks, bakers, and blacksmiths, but few claiming such occupations as architect, butcher, cabinetmaker, musician, or schoolteacher.67 The average age of recruits ranged in the middle twenties.
Foreigners formed a conspicuous part of the Regular Army. A table compiled by the Adjutant General covering the years 1865 through 1874 showed half of all recruits to have been born in a foreign country. Ireland led, with more than twenty percent of the total. Germany followed, with twelve percent. Much opinion held that the American Army should contain more Americans; the Inspector General, for example, in 1888 labeled the percentage of foreigners a “mortifying spectacle.”68 But many of the foreign recruits had seen military service in their homeland, quickly adapted to their new life, and often rose to noncommissioned rank in a short time. “Of the foreigners,” observed a Fourth Cavalry officer, “I preferred the Irish—they were more intelligent and resourceful as a rule. However, if a German was fit to be a noncommissioned officer he usually made a good one—he was feared by the men, did not curry favor, but was rigid in carrying out orders.”69
Because the army held so little appeal, it suffered from an extraordinary turnover. Each year death, desertion, and discharge claimed from twenty-five to forty percent of the enlisted force.70 Desertion ate at the ranks with cancerous voracity. The desertion rate fluctuated between a high of 32.6 percent in 1871, when the pay reduction of 1870 took effect, and a low of 6.2 percent in 1891. In 1891 the Adjutant General calculated that, of the 255,712 men signed up since 1867, 88,475, or about one-third, had deserted. Such defections were incredibly wasteful as well as hurtful to morale, discipline, and efficiency. Many studies probed for causes and remedies, but not until after the Indian Wars was the affliction eased.71 Reenlistments scarcely offset the loss of experienced men. About one thousand reenlisted each year; they made up a cadre of some six to seven thousand veterans of one or more five-year terms. Combined with the almost total absence of formal training, the high loss rate and low reenlistment rate kept the ranks heavy with inexperienced men.
The noncommissioned officers formed the backbone of the enlisted force. The tough but paternalistic Irish or German first sergeant, his sleeve bright with hash marks, became almost a stereotype in his own time, as a veteran cavalry officer recalled:
It was a fine sight to see one of these old men on muster or monthly inspection. Erect and soldierly, with his red face glistening, his white hair cut close, his arms and accouterments shining, not a wrinkle in his neat-fitting uniform, nor a speck of dust about him, his corps badge, and it may be a medal, on his breast, he stood in the ranks among the others like an oak tree in a grove of cottonwood saplings.72
Although many corporals and sergeants personified this stereotype, the noncommissioned corps as a whole inspired continuing criticism for brutality and neglect of duty. Officers often attributed the high desertion rate to tyrannical NCOs and believed that the need to attract better men to these posts justified significantly higher pay, even as much as $50 to $75 a month.73
Much thought and discussion centered on how to improve the quality of the rank and file. One way was to improve the quality of recruits. Better pay and living conditions might have brought in better men. Tighter mental and physical requirements might have screened out many of the bad prospects. Recruiting rendezvous located in rural areas instead of the big cities might have lured more of the healthy young farm boys that officers judged to make the best soldiers. One proposal was to “localize” regiments on the Prussian pattern. Regiments would obtain their own recruits from assigned home localities, thus attracting better men and fostering a solidarity born of common origins and community pride.74 No such innovations were attempted, however, and it may be doubted that, even with the dramatic drop in desertions that probably would have resulted, enough men of the desired character could have been persuaded to enlist.
Another approach to the problem, stressed repeatedly by military leaders, was to provide better training of recruits. They received only rudimentary instruction at the recruit depots—Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, for cavalry; David’s Island, New York, and Columbus Barracks, Ohio, for infantry and artillery—before being forwarded to their units. Here, theoretically, company officers and NCOs trained them in their duties. But in practice fatigue, guard, and other daily levies on the undermanned companies rarely left men enough time for training, and rarely, in fact, was there any training. Deficiencies were most glaring in horsemanship and marksmanship—the latter aggravated by economy strictures that allowed no more than a handful of cartridges a year for target practice. Experience, especially in field operations, helped some. But most companies contained a high proportion of men unversed in the basic military skills.75
The army’s dismal showing in the Sioux and Nez Perce operations of 1876–77, especially at the Little Bighorn and Big Hole, stirred tentative beginnings at reform. In 1881 “companies of instruction” were organized at the recruit depots to give enlistees four months of basic training before their assignment to a unit.76 In 1878 post schools for the education of soldiers, optional since they were authorized in 1866, were made mandatory.77 New interest awakened in target practice as ammunition restrictions were relaxed and competition was encouraged.78 Even so, throughout the 1880s, while units remained understrength and widely dispersed on frontier duty, meaningful training continued to be more a hope than a reality. The Seventh Cavalrymen who fought at Wounded Knee in 1890 were almost as green as those who had fought at the Little Bighorn in 1876.79
Unit pride and esprit de corps did not sink to lows implied by the rapid turnover and marginal quality of the enlisted complement. Scattered widely, companies rarely, if ever, came together to serve as a regiment or even a significant portion of it. Companies provided the familiar associations, common experiences, and distinctive characteristics and traditions with which men identified. The company, therefore, rather than the regiment, commanded loyalties and fostered solidarity.
Some of the regiments succeeded in establishing their individuality and inspiring pride in their members. Custer’s Seventh Cavalry reflected the flamboyance of its commander from 1867 to 1876 and thereafter found a powerful bond in me
mory of the Little Bighorn. Miles’ Fifth Infantry drew inspiration from its superior record in the Red River and Sioux wars and from its campaigns mounted on Indian ponies. Of the cavalry, Mackenzie’s Fourth, Merrit’s Fifth, and Carr’s Sixth enjoyed notable traditions, while infantry regiments of special character included Floyd-Jones’ Third, Hazen’s Sixth, Gibbon’s Seventh, Kautz’ Eighth, and Ruger’s Eighteenth.80
The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry were especially distinctive because they were composed of black enlisted men and white officers. “Buffalo soldiers,” the Indians labeled the Tenth Cavalry troopers, who proudly made the buffalo the central figure of the regimental crest. Soon the term came to signify all the black soldiers. Throughout the closing decades of Indian conflict, the “blacks in blue” formed a conspicuous and controversial part of the Regular Army.81
The blacks brought to the army certain strengths and weaknesses that in large measure reflected their heritage of slavery and subordination. Almost all were illiterate, throwing on their officers the burden of paperwork. Few possessed the mechanical skills necessary for the daily functioning of a military unit. Lack of resourcefulness, initiative, and a sense of responsibility made them more dependent upon good leaders than white soldiers and less effective when acting individually. At the same time, the blacks excelled in discipline, morale, patience and good humor in adversity, physical endurance, and sobriety. Above all, they performed well on campaign and in combat. Even their severest critics testified to their exceptional record of field service. General Sherman, for example, conceding his preference for white troops, declared of the blacks in 1874: “They are good troops, they make first-rate sentinels, are faithful to their trust, and are as brave as the occasion calls for.”82
None captured the special character of the buffalo soldiers, both in paint and prose, better than artist Frederic Remington. Campaigning with them in Arizona, he wrote:
The Negro troopers sat about, their black skins shining with perspiration, and took no interest in the matter at hand. They occupied such time in joking and in merriment as seemed fitted for growling. They may be tired and they may be hungry, but they do not see fit to augment their misery by finding fault with everybody and everything. In this particular they are charming men with whom to serve. Officers have often confessed to me that when they are on long and monotonous field service and are troubled with a depression of spirits, they have only to go about the campfires of the Negro soldier in order to be amused and cheered by the clever absurdities of the men. … As to their bravery: “Will they fight?” That is easily answered. They have fought many, many times. The old sergeant sitting near me, as calm of feature as a bronze statue, once deliberately walked over a Cheyenne rifle pit and killed his man. One little fellow near him once took charge of a lot of stampeded cavalry horses when Apache bullets were flying loose and no one knew from what point to expect them next.83
As the years passed, the black regiments came to contain an unusually large percentage of veterans. To the white man, explained Secretary of War Redfield Proctor in 1889, the army too often offered merely a refuge, while to the black man it offered a career.84 Black regiments consistently enjoyed high reenlistment and low desertion rates. The leadership, too, demonstrated unusual continuity. Col. Edward Hatch commanded the Ninth Cavalry from 1866 to 1889, Col. Benjamin H. Grierson the Tenth from 1866 to 1890. Col. Joseph H. Potter headed the Twenty-fourth Infantry for thirteen years and Col. George Andrews the Twenty-fifth for twenty-one years. Similar instances of longevity existed among field and company officers. Moreover, unit pride and esprit de corps ran high in the black regiments, the product, in part, of this personnel continuity, but also of increasing professionalism, superior performance, a solidarity born of prejudice, and a determination to demonstrate the potential of the black race. As the Tenth Cavalry chaplain astutely observed, black soldiers “are possessed of the notion that the colored people of the whole country are more or less affected by their conduct in the Army.”85
Despite their proven worth, the black regiments were the target of searing racial prejudice. In 1873 an officer’s wife at Camp Supply, Indian Territory, recorded a typical sentiment in praising a new commander for abolishing racially mixed guards: “It was outrageous to put white and black in the same little guard room, and colored sergeants over white corporals and privates.”86 A memorable and well-publicized incident occurred at Fort Leavenworth in 1867. The post commander, Col. William Hoffman, ordered the “nigger troops” of the Tenth Cavalry not to form on parade so close to his men of the Third Infantry. Colonel Grierson sprang to the Tenth’s defense, and the two colonels engaged in a heated dispute in front of the assembled command.87 Although most officers of black regiments took great pride in their units, they suffered social condescension, if not ostracism, from the rest of the officer corps.88 Worse yet, the black regiments endured discrimination in both the quantity and quality of supplies, equipment, and horses, and for twenty-five years they remained without relief in the most disagreeable sectors of the frontier.
Not surprisingly, therefore, sentiment flourished for abolition of the black regiments. They were branded inefficient and costly in comparison with white regiments. Quartermaster officers produced figures purporting to show that black regiments used up more horses and lost or damaged more equipment than the white regiments. Blacks were said to be careless, irresponsible, lazy, dishonest, and immoral. Moreover, black and white units supposedly did not mix well in the same garrison.89 While citing all these arguments, proponents of abolishing the black regiments presented their efforts as motivated by a desire to eradicate the racial discrimination that barred blacks from all but four regiments and thus denied them constitutional rights so recently won. In Congress the movement expressed itself in attempts to repeal the “class legislation” that provided for these regiments. Opponents exposed this hypocrisy by pointing out that repeal would place enlistment of blacks wholly at the discretion of recruiting officers and would therefore result in eliminating them from the army altogether.90 Paradoxically, the failure of the attempts in the 1870s to abolish racial segregation in the army insured blacks the continuing source of racial pride provided by the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry.
Although Sherman held the post of commanding general of the army and profoundly influenced its character, he did not actually command it. The army staff—more exactly, the War Department staff—remained resolutely outside Sherman’s army. And the complications that the staff’s independence created for the commanding general in turn made his authority over the line more nominal than real.
The staff bureaus not only serviced the army line and provided staff officers for the division and department commanders. Several had important nonmilitary responsibilities, usually specifically assigned by act of Congress. The Corps of Engineers, for example, found greater employment in river and harbor work and lake and coast surveys than in military construction projects. The burgeoning weather forecasting responsibilities of the Signal Corps dominated this bureau until they were finally transferred to the Department of Agriculture in 1890. Moreover, the procurement and distribution functions of the supply bureaus were carried out in an environment more civilian than military.
These considerations were cited to justify a distinction between the business of the War Department and the business of the army, and in turn to justify a direct reporting relationship of the staff heads to the Secretary of War. This was a feature of the coordinate system by which the War Department had been organized since the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Theoretically, the President exercised his constitutional authority as commander in chief directly through the commanding general. The civilian Secretary of War was presumed not to possess the military competence to participate in command functions. Instead, working through the staff chiefs, he concerned himself with the political, administrative, and fiscal affairs of the department. Ever since 1836, army regulations had reflec
ted this division of authority by reserving fiscal powers to the Secretary and “discipline and military control” to the commanding general.
The coordinate system pleased neither the Secretary nor the commanding general. From the Secretary’s viewpoint, the hallowed tradition of civilian control of the military was compromised by an arrangement that gave him access to the army line only through a general not of his choosing and beyond his power to remove; moreover, such access as this afforded was confused by the general’s direct channel to the President. From the general’s viewpoint, on the other hand, the privileged position of the staff wrought havoc with the principle that the operational commander should control his logistics. The staff chiefs, independent of the commanding general, presided over virtually autonomous bureaucratic domains, reported directly to the Secretary, and through detailed knowledge of their departments brought decisive influence to bear on him.
In theory, the coordinate system favored the commanding general because it gave him a direct relationship with the President. But a strong Secretary, coupled with a weak or indifferent President, placed the general at a serious disadvantage. In the War Department staff bureaus, which had counterparts in the headquarters of the territorial divisions and departments, the Secretary possessed an apparatus by which he might reach the army without recourse to the commanding general. Winfield Scott had confronted such a Secretary in Jefferson Davis during the 1850s. Sherman confronted such a Secretary in William W. Belknap during the 1870s. Both generals lost, and both served virtually as commanding generals without a command.91
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