The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 48, October, 1861

It is curious to see that the difficulties a general has to contend with now are much the same that were found in the first Revolution: bad food,—the poor surgeon at Valley Forge, whose diary was printed the other day, could not keep it on his stomach at any rate,—insufficient clothing, and no shoes at all, as the bloody snow bore witness,—and among our own New England troops "a spirit of insubordination which they took for independence," as Washington expressed himself. We do not think the New England men have rendered themselves liable to this reproach of late,—and this is a remarkable tribute to the influence of a true republican training. But in various quarters there has been enough of it, and the consequent disorganization of at least one free and easy regiment is no more than might have been expected.

A panic or two, with all the disgrace and suffering that attach to such hysterical paroxysms, or at least a defeat, are the experiences through which half-organized bodies often pass to teach them the meaning of discipline and mechanical habit. An army must go through the annealing process like glass; let a few regiments be cracked to pieces because their leaders did not know how to withdraw them gradually from the furnace of action, and the lesson will be all the better remembered because taught by a costly example. Our early mishaps were all predicted, sometimes in formal shape, as in various letters dated long before the breaking out of hostilities, and very often in the common talk of those about us. But, after all, when the first chastisement from our hard schoolmaster, Experience, comes upon us, it is a kind of surprise, in spite of all our preparation.

A writer in the present number of this magazine shows us that there is a complete literature of panics, not merely as occurring among new levies, but seizing on the best-appointed armies, containing as much individual bravery as any that never ran away from an enemy. The men of Israel gave way before the men of Benjamin, "retired" in the language of Scripture, in order to lead them into ambush. At a given signal they faced about, and the men of Benjamin "were amazed" (panic-struck) and "turned their backs before the men of Israel unto the way of the wilderness,"—took to the woods, as we should say. Their enemies did not lie still or run as fast the other way, like ours at Bull Run, but they "inclosed" them, and "chased them, and trode them down with ease," and "gleaned of them in the highways," and "pursued hard after them." Yet "all these were men of valor."

Not to return to our old classical friends, what modern nation has ever known how to fight that had not learned how to be beaten and how to run? The English ran ninety miles from Bannockburn, seared by the "gillies" and the baggage-wagons. They paid back their debt at Culloden. The Prussian armies were routed at Jena and Auerstädt. They had their revenge in the "sauve qui peut" of Waterloo. The great armada, British and French, undertook to bombard Sebastopol, and eight ships of the line were so mauled that they had to go back to Toulon and Portsmouth for repairs. Lord Raglan is said to have so far despaired of success as to have contemplated raising the siege.

Everybody remembers the feeling produced by the repeated fruitless attacks on the fortifications, the three unsuccessful bombardments, the divided counsels, the disappointment and death of Lord Raglan, the complaints of Canrobert of the want of a single commanding intellect, and the relinquishment of his own position to Pelissier, itself a confession of failure. If there ever was a campaign begun with defeat and disaster, it was that which ended with the fall of Sebastopol.

Read the account of the retreat of the advanced force of our own army at the Battle of Monmouth Court-House. Washington could not believe the first story told him. Presently he met one fugitive after another, and then Grayson's and Patton's regiments in disorderly retreat. He did not know what to make of it. There had been no fighting except a successful skirmish with the enemy's cavalry. He met Major Howard; this officer could give no reason for the running,—had never seen the like. Another officer swears they are flying from a shadow. Lee tries to account for it,—troops confused by contradictory intelligence, by disobedience of orders, by the meddling and blundering of individuals,—vague excuses all, the plain truth being that they had given way to a panic. But for Washington's fierce commands and threats, the retreat might have become a total rout.

It is curious to see how the little incidents, even, of our late accelerated retrograde movement recall those of the old Revolutionary story. Mr. Russell speaks thus of the fugitives: "Faces black and dusty, tongues out in the heat, eyes staring,—it was a most wonderful sight." If Mr. Russell had ever read Stedman's account of his own countrymen's twenty-mile run from Concord to Bunker's Hill, he would have learned that they "were so much exhausted with fatigue, that they were obliged to lie down for rest on the ground, their tongues hanging out of their mouths, like those of dogs after a chase." One rout is as much like another as the scamper of one flock of sheep like that of all others.

A pleasing consequence of this war we are engaged in has hardly been enough thought of. It is a rough way of introducing distant fellow-citizens of the same land to each other's acquaintance. Next to the intimacy of love is that of enmity. Nay,

 
  "Love itself could never pant
  For all that beauty sighs to grant
  With half the fervor hate bestows
  Upon the last embrace of foes,
  When, grappling in the fight, they fold
  Those arms that ne'er shall lose their hold."
 

"We shall learn to respect each other," as one of our conservative friends said long ago. It is a great mistake to try to prove our own countrymen cowards and degenerate from the old stock. It is worth the price of some hard fighting to show the contrary to the satisfaction of both parties. The Scotch and English called each other all possible hard names in the time of their international warfare; but the day has come for them, as it will surely come for us, when the rivals and enemies must stand side by side and shoulder to shoulder, each proud of the other's bravery.

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For three-quarters of a century we have been melting our several destinies in one common crucible, to mould a new and mighty empire such as the world has never seen. Our partners cannot expect to be allowed to break the crucible or the mould, or to carry away the once separate portions now flowing in a single incandescent flood. We cannot sell and they cannot buy our past. Our nation has pledged itself to unity by the whole course of its united action. There is one debt alone that all the cotton-fields of the South could never pay: it is the price of our voluntary humiliation for the sake of keeping peace with the slaveholders. We may be robbed of our inalienable nationality, if treason is strong enough, but we are trustees of the life of three generations for the benefit of all that are yet to be. We cannot sell. We dare not break the entail of freedom and disinherit the first-born of half a continent.

When the Plebeians seceded to the Mons Sacer, some five hundred years before the Christian era, the Consul Menenius Agrippa brought them back by his well-known fable of the Belly and the Members. Perhaps it would be too much to expect to call back our seceders with a fable which they will hardly have the opportunity of reading in the present condition of the postal service, but the state of the case may be put with a certain degree of truth in this of

THE FRONT-TEETH AND THE GRINDERS.

Once on a time a mutiny arose among the teeth of a worthy man, in good health and blessed with a sound constitution, commonly known as Uncle Samuel. The cutting-teeth, or incisors, and the eye-teeth, or canines, though not nearly so many, all counted, nor so large, nor so strong as the grinders, and by no means so white, but, on the contrary, very much discolored, began to find fault with the grinders as not good enough company for them. The eye-teeth, being very sharp and fitted for seizing and tearing, and standing out taller than the rest, claimed to lead them. Presently, one of them complained that it ached very badly, and then another and another. Very soon the cutting-teeth, which pretended they were supplied by the same nerve, and were proud of it, began to ache also. They all agreed that it was the fault of the grinders.

About this time, Uncle Samuel, having used his old tooth-brush (which was never a good one, having no stiffness in the bristles) for four years, took a new one, recommended to him by a great number of people as a homely, but useful article. Thereupon all the front-teeth, one after another, declared that Uncle Samuel meant to scour them white, which was a thing they would never submit to, though the whole civilized world was calling on them to do so. So they all insisted on getting out of the sockets in which they had grown and stood for so many years. But the wisdom-teeth spoke up for the others and said,—

"Nay, there be but twelve of you front-teeth, and there be twenty of us grinders. We are the strongest, and a good deal nearest the muscles and the joint, but we cannot spare you. We have put up with your black stains, your jumping aches, and your snappish looks, and now we are not going to let you go, under the pretence that you are to be scrubbed white, if you stay. You don't work half so hard as we do, but you can bite the food well enough, which we can grind so much better than you. We belong to each other. You must stay."

Thereupon the front-teeth, first the canines or dog-teeth, next the incisors or cutting-teeth, proceeded to declare themselves out of their sockets, and no longer belonging to the jaws of Uncle Samuel.

Then Uncle Samuel arose in his wrath and shut his jaws tightly together, and swore that he would keep them shut till those aching and discolored teeth of his went to pieces in their sockets, if need were, rather than have them drawn, standing, as some of them did, at the very opening of his throat and stomach.

And now, if you will please to observe, all those teeth are beginning to ache worse than ever, and to decay very fast, so that it will take a great deal of gold to stop the holes that are forming in them. But the great white grinders are as sound as ever, and will remain so until Uncle Samuel thinks the time has come for opening his mouth. In the mean time they keep on grinding in a quiet way, though the others have had to stop biting for a long time. When Uncle Samuel opens his mouth, they will be as ready for work as ever; but those poor discolored teeth will be tender for a great while, and never be so strong as they were before they foolishly declared themselves out of their sockets.

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The foregoing fable is respectfully dedicated to the Southern Plebs, who, under the lead of their "Patrician" masters, have "seceded," like their predecessors in the days of Menenius Agrippa.