APPENDIX C.COMPARISONS WITH LATER WARS.
The analogies between the Revolutionary War and later American wars are noticed in the Preface. Some special points should be noted for further comparisons.
Thefieldcasualties, including killed and wounded, in twenty-six of the principal engagements of the Revolution, do not greatly exceed 9,000; but other causes kept the army upon a very unsatisfactory basis in respect of numbers as well as efficiency.
Operations in Canada, early in the war, irrespective of the expeditions of Montgomery and Arnold, cost, through a visitation of small-pox, 5,000 lives in sixty days. (Page88.)
At the April muster of the army in 1776, only 8,303, out of a total of 10,235, were fit for duty. (Page87.)
At the August muster, 1776, 3,678 were reported as sick, either present or on furlough, out of a total of 17,225. (Pages101,102.)
At the September muster, 1776, less than 20,000 were reported as fit for duty (page114), out of a total of 27,000 (page103).
At the Battle of Trenton, Christmas night, 1776, more than 1,000 out of a force of 2,400 were disabled by frost during the brief march and engagement which gave such fresh vigor to the cause of American Independence. (Page142.)
At the October muster of the same year, out of a total of 25,735, the large number of 8,075 was reported as sick, or on furlough. (Page122.)
The camps at Morristown, Valley Forge, and at the South, were scenes of great suffering, distress, and waste. The suffering was greater in crowded and stationary camps than whenon the march. Special diseases like measles, then as ever since, prostrated great numbers who suddenly changed house for canvas shelter. In 1862, at one of the healthiest cantonments at the North, near Indianapolis, fully 1,400 were disabled for duty within four weeks after reporting for muster. A similar experience marked Camps Chase, Dennison, and Jackson, Ohio, and Camp Douglas, Illinois.
That “three months” service in 1861 was exceptionally effective under existing conditions, and similar service in the war with Spain, in 1898, reads more like some fabulous tale than the faithful record of continuous victories by an improvised army, with a minimum sacrifice of life. (See Military Notes in Preface.)
In the Revolutionary War, gardens and orchards, near camps, seriously endangered both discipline and health. Home luxuries from visiting friends became so injurious in their effects that Washington was compelled to deal sternly with this mistaken kindness. Besides all this, quartermasters and commissaries, ignorant of their duties, speculated upon public stores; and even surgeons embezzled supplies until some regiments had no medicines for immediate emergencies. (Page123.)
Derelictions from duty were not peculiar to Revolutionary times. Early in 1861, when haste was so urgent, and the North was not prepared to clothe promptly even seventy-five thousand men, the First and Second Ohio reached Harrisburg, en route for Washington, only to find that the uniforms contracted for and delivered were worthless. The Fifteenth Ohio, after a rain, found themselves at Grafton, W. Va., just after the battle of Philippi, with soleless shoes, glue having been used in their manufacture instead of pegs or thread. The Adjutant-General of that State, then inspecting Ohio troops, peremptorily forbade their moving until an entire refit could be supplied, and William Dennison, then Governor, sustained his action.
The Continental Congress, during the war with Great Britain, tried to act as Commander-in-Chief, until in conscious impotence it surrendered military trusts to Washington, withthe impressive Resolution, that “the very existence of civil liberty depends upon the right exercise of military powers,” and that “the vigorous, decisive conduct of these” is “impossible in distant, numerous and deliberative bodies.” (Page148.)
The Revolutionary War, therefore, illustrated every form of distemper which belongs to war in a republic, when its citizens are suddenly called to face camp and battle conditions without adequate training and preparation in advance. Jealousy of a standing army, greed for office and place, and incessant, selfish, or self-asserting antagonisms, were the chief burdens that grieved the soul and embarrassed the movements of Washington, the American Commander-in-Chief.