General Cooke's 1871 comments on the The Army and Navy

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In November 1871 the Society of the Army of the Cumberland held its fifth reunion in Detroit, Michigan. Just two years away from retirement, General Cooke then resided in Detroit where he commanded the Department of the Lakes. So of course he was invited to the reunion. The published transcript shows that he formally responded to one of the toasts. Remarks below are transcribed from the Detroit Free Press, November 17, 1871. (Also published in the 1872 volume, Fifth Reunion of the Society of the Army of the Cumblerland.)

The printed 1872 volume clarifies a blurred word in the newspaper version: "fuglemen."

fugleman

"1. a trained soldier formerly posted in front of a line of soldiers at drill to serve as a model in their exercises...." --Merriam-Webster

From the Detroit Free Press, November 17, 1871:

The third regular toast, “The Army and Navy.” Responded to by Gen P. St. George Cooke, as follows:

At the usual civic festivals this toast, as a compliment, calls only for an acknowledgment of thanks, and consequently of a brevity worth the approval of the highest authority, civil and military—to wit: of our present Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. One who has realized a theory that in action is developed the supremest human triumphs; in speech next, and in writing third in order.

I adopt the theory—I embrace it with avidity; it should be a favorite with a profession, which, almost to a man, might say, with the great warrior Anthony, “I am no orator.”

We have in our land many soldiers now—many able officers—successful, many of them, in their professions and pursuits before their country’s extreme danger called them to arms; their ready response, as well as after distinction, proved them to have been of the elite; now again they are prominent citizens.

But that terrible war was a long one, and a fast school; for apt scholars there was time to learn that profession, and to develope not only thousands of volunteers into able, valuable officers, but some of them—as also regular officers—into commanding Generals. You are witnesses and proofs that such was the process, such the experience of the successful ones. Where now are those first Major Generals! I served under some of them, and tragic failures they were.

We could extemporize now a grand army, perhaps equal to any existing; but twenty years hence! How then! For the first year of a war—it is our experience—volunteers fall far short of the mark; and great wars are becoming short and sharp, counting only by months.

Our army, now reduced to 30,000 men, will again become the teachers of science and practice of war; the inventers, or lawful custodians of their improvements; and the fuglemen of the rank and file.

It is a thankless service; as patriots we pray for honorable peace; as soldiers we languish for professional excitement and promotion. But there’s the rub; when war comes the regulars have but small advancements; and, in truth, I think that long subordinate service—with the habit of mere obedience—cramps rather than developes capacities for command.

The regulars, with our volunteer policy, became the fly-wheel of that great helpless machine—an army of raw volunteers; they keep it a-going; the first motions are bad enough: but what would happen without some infusion of practical knowledge, and without the slowly acquired science of a very important number of them? And does it not sometimes happen that an influential politician turned General is borne along on the shoulders of some modest educated soldier of low rank?

But it is wonderful, when we consider the amount of duty performed and the various parts that are played by our small army. It can be found from the Tropic of Cancer to the Arctic Circle; from the Bay of Fundy to the Pacific shore. It defends frontiers from the tomahawk—which means, now, repeating arms in the hands of the Indians; it sometimes has to watch and control the mob in our great cities; it enforces the law and teaches civilization in some of the Southern States, and has begun, in strange alliance with the Quakers, much the same office for our red brethren.

We are sentinels—and scarcely more—on external frontiers almost too expanded for computation. We arrest awful conflagrations, and defend from robbers, and care for, not only property, but vast crowds of trembling, homeless and starving women and children.

Gentlemen, how can I do justice to the Navy? And how remarkably reticent they are, those men of daring deeds! I think they have not produced a single orator; but fortunately for them, their achievements are eloquent, and need no trumpeter.

In our first foreign war, when the outlook was rather gloomy, they led off with victories; striking a chord of the national heart, which still vibrates in their favor. In the war of the rebellion, with a liberal volunteer infusion, they performed an amount of service that is almost incredible, when we consider the smallness of their force at the beginning. Always harmonious when co-operating with the army, they illustrated their career with actions not only of rival importance and brilliancy, but which, in fact, have won the applause of nations.

The book version prints a paragraph at the start of Cooke's response which does not appear in the newspaper transcript. There Cooke reveals that in 1863, he volunteered for duty in the Army of the Cumberland in a letter to General Rosecrans that strangely "miscarried." Nothing of Cooke's 1871 remarks before the Society of the Army of the Cumberland is recorded in Otis E. Young's classic biography, The West of Philip St George Cooke. However, the fate of that 1863 dead letter does illuminate Young's assessment of this unfortunate period in Cooke's career when "it is remarkable that Cooke had so little of an intra-service reputation that no officer requested his services in any capacity."

"In the spring of 1863, being at St. Louis, I wrote a letter to your Commanding General, offering myself as a volunteer in your army. Afterward, in New York City, GENERAL ROSECRANS informed me--with flattering expressions of regret--that he never received it--the letter miscarried."  --Philip St. George Cooke, speaking at reunion banquet in Detroit for the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, November 16, 1871