of a
great campaign. In the running fights against Apache or Blackfoot the
rules of strategy and tactics were of small account. The soldier was
constrained to acknowledge the brave and the trapper as his teachers;
and Moltke himself, with all his lore, would have been utterly
baffled by the cunning of the Indian. Before the war of 1845-6 the
strength of the regular army was not more than 8500 men; and the
whole of this force, with the exception of a few batteries, was
scattered in small detachments along the frontier. The troops were
never brought together in considerable bodies; and although they were
well drilled and under the strictest discipline, neither the
commanders nor the staff had the least experience of handling men in
masses. Many of the infantry officers had never drilled with a whole
battalion since they left West Point. A brigade of cavalry--that is,
two or three regiments working together as a single unit--had never
been assembled; and scarcely a single general had ever commanded a
force composed of the three arms, either on service or on parade.
"During my twenty years of service on the frontier," said one of the
most famous of the Confederate leaders,* (* General R.S. Ewell.) "I
learned all about commanding fifty United States dragoons and forgot
everything else."

Nevertheless, this life of enterprise and hard work, the constant
struggle against nature, for the illimitable space of the
inhospitable wilderness was a more formidable antagonist than the
stealthy savage, benefited the American soldier in more ways than
one. He grew accustomed to danger and privation. He learned to use
his wits; to adapt his means to his end; to depend on his
intelligence rather than on rule. Above all, even the most junior had
experience of independent command before the enemy. A ready
assumption of responsibility and a prompt initiative distinguished
the regular officers from the very outset of the Civil War; and these
characteristics had been acquired on the western prairies.

But the warfare of the frontier had none of the glamour of the
warfare which is waged with equal arms against an equal enemy, of the
conflict of nation against nation. To bring the foe to bay was a
matter of the utmost difficulty. A fight at close quarters was of
rare occurrence, and the most successful campaign ended in the
destruction of a cluster of dirty wigwams, or the surrender of a
handful of starving savages. In such unsatisfactory ser