CHAPTER XV

MILITARY POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES FROM THE WAR OF THE REBELLION TO

THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

HEN the Confederacy had at last been crushed and

WHEN

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the great armies of veteran volunteers disbanded,1 the disturbed condition of the South 2 and the violation of the Monroe Doctrine by the Allied invasion of Mexico 3 compelled Congress to increase the Regular Army from 39,273 to 54,641 by the Act of July 28, 1866,5 and the grade of General was revived three days earlier and bestowed on LieutenantGeneral Grant. In 1867 the French forces were withdrawn from Mexico and the Emperor Maximilian, being left in the lurch, was captured and shot, but it was not until March 3, 1869, that the Army was reduced to 37,313. Seventeen months later the grades of General and Lieutenant-General were both abolished, the number of general officers reduced, the pay of the Army fixed and provision made for a board to select the officers to be mustered out of service. During 1874, 1875 and 1876 five acts effected a further reduction in the strength of the Army to 27,472,10 the maximum of enlisted men being definitely fixed at 25,000 11 in conformity with the suggestion contained in the Act of July 29, 1861.12 For the ensuing twenty-two years 13 the actual strength of the military establishment never exceeded 28,000 14 until the Act of March 8, 1898,15 added two regiments of artillery, thus bringing its paper strength up to 28,747.16

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Throughout the period from the close of the War of the Rebellion until April, 1898, the Army was principally occupied with garrison and constabulary duties and with almost uninterrupted campaigns against the Indians.17

During the seventeen years preceding the outbreak of the war with Spain three most important institutions were inaugurated. The first was the Infantry and Cavalry School, which was established at Forth Leavenworth, Kansas, by General William T. Sherman's General Order, No. 42, dated May 7, 1881, for the purpose of giving special and supplementary training to those arms. Since that time the name has been changed several times and certain other schools amalgamated with it.1 The consolidated institution now bears the title of the Army School of the Line and furnishes an admirable course for officers in the higher branches of their profession.

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The second was the Board on Fortifications and Other Defenses better known as the Endicott Board "- created by Act of Congress approved March 3, 1885.19 The absolute lack of systematic fortification or modern armament rendered such an organization imperative. Its report, submitted to the Hon. William C. Endicott, then Secretary of War, on January 3, 1886, marked the inauguration of the present scheme of coast defence which was further developed by another board appointed twenty years later.20

The third was "a School of instruction for drill and practice for Cavalry and Light Artillery," which was authorized by the Act of Congress of January 29, 1887, and promulgated by General Order No. 9, Headquarters of the Army, Adjutant-General's Office, under date of February 9, 1887. Its establishment at Fort Riley, Kansas, took place in consequence of General Order No. 17 from the same source, dated March 14, 1892. In War Department General Order No. 191, dated September 13, 1907, it received its present title of "the Mounted Service School at Fort Riley, Kansas," and affords a thorough course of instruction to officers of the Cavalry arm.21

CHAPTER XVI

THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

N spite of all the lessons of the past

IN

"The war with Spain, declared from the 21st of April, 1898, found us with the smallest Regular Army, in proportion to population, that we have had at the beginning of any of our wars. It consisted of but 2,143 officers and 26,040 enlisted men,” 1

in other words, of less than four one-hundredths of one per cent. of our estimated population; 2 an army too small and widely scattered to serve as a school of application; 3 too small for a nucleus in case of needed expansion, and, with only the militia behind it, too small for serious military consideration by any of the great Powers with which the United States is bound to rank.* It might be supposed that, having insisted for years on a mobile army of pigmy dimensions, with no organized reserve, Congress would have paid some attention to our coast defences, yet so feebly did it respond to the recommendations of the Endicott Board on that subject that, twelve years after the plans of the board had been adopted, only 151 guns had been placed in position,5 out of 2,362 considered as the necessary armament of our fortifications. The militia law had been permitted to stand with the same defects which characterised it nearly one hundred years before. No provision had been made for national reserves, and the desire of the various staff departments to accumulate an adequate reserve of war supplies had been repeatedly

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* In 1898 the Russian army on a peace footing numbered approximately 1,000,000 officers and men; the French army, 602,720; the German army, 580,612; the Austrian army, 349,205; and the British army (the Home army), 173,730. See Statesman's Year Book for 1898.

frowned upon. Thirty years of peace had wrought such enervation in the business methods of the War Department that it was sadly afflicted with dry-rot, so much so that the Secretary of War had to confess that "the governmental machinery was altogether inadequate to immediately meet the emergency" of actual war." As Captain Rhodes pertinently

observed: 8

"If the beginning of the war with Spain - a second-rate military power, . . found our country without accurate maps and statistical information of our adversary's military resources; * lacking in carefully formulated plans of mobilization, concentration and operation; without magazine rifles, smokeless powder, and breech-loading cannon for our reserves, and with reserves themselves the peers of any soldiers on earth in intelligence, bravery and military initiative, but absolutely ignorant of the more serious phases of war; if, we repeat, this comparatively petty war found us more or less unprepared, what must have been our loss in lives, treasure and national prestige had we been pitted against a first-class power."

Not alone in the preposterously small size of its army was the United States unready for war, but, as previously stated, the coast defences were totally insufficient and supplied with only a fraction of the guns, ammunition 10 and troops required. No munitions of war existed to arm and equip any force larger than the liliputian Regular Army. To meet the land forces of Spain with any fair chance of success involved the raising of large numbers of raw troops which had then to be organized, equipped and trained as best they could

The Anuario Militar de España for 1898 gave the strength of the Spanish army, including irregular troops, at 492,067, but these figures are unquestionably much too high. In April, 1898, there were, however, 196,820 Spanish soldiers in Cuba - viz: 155,302 regulars and 41,518 volunteers and about 9,000 regulars in Porto Rico-facts that the American authorities did not even know approximately. On April 12th, General Fitzhugh Lee, then Consul-General in Cuba, testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs that there were 97,000 to 98,000 Spanish troops in Cuba. General Miles estimated their strength at 150,000, which, although much nearer the truth, fell far short of the actual numbers.-Sargent, The Campaign of Santiago de Cuba, I, pp. 79-80; III, pp. 164-167.