ional soldiers, then, were captains and
subalterns whose experience was confined to company duty at frontier
posts hundreds of miles from civilization, except in the case of the
engineers, the staff corps, and some of the artillery in sea-coast
forts. With the same exceptions, the opportunities for enlarging
their theoretic knowledge had been small. It was before the days of
post libraries, and books of any sort were a rarity at the
garrisons. In the first year of the war, I expressed to General
Gordon Granger my surprise at finding how little most line officers
had added to the theoretic reading they got at the academy. "What
could you expect," he said in his sweeping way, "of men who have had
to spend their lives at a two-company post, where there was nothing
to do when off duty but play draw-poker and drink whiskey at the
sutler's shop?" This was, of course, meant to be picturesquely
extravagant, but it hit the nail on the head, after all. Some of the
officers of the old regime did not conceal their contempt for books.
It was a stock story in the army that when the Utah expedition was
fitting out in 1856, General Henry Hunt, chief of artillery of the
army of the Potomac, then a young artillery officer, applied to
General Twiggs, from whose command part of the expedition was making
up, for leave to take a little box of military books. "No, sir," was
the peremptory response; "no room in the train for such nonsense."
Hunt retired chop-fallen; but soon after another officer came in,
with "General, our mess has a keg of very nice whiskey we don't want
to lose; won't you direct the quartermaster to let it go in the
wagons?" "Oh yes, sir. Oh yes, anything in reason!" If not true, the
story is good enough to be true, as its currency attests; but
whether true or no, the "fable teaches" that post-graduate study in
the old army was done under difficulties.

The course of study at West Point had narrower limitations than most
people think, and it would be easy to be unfair by demanding too
much of the graduates of that military college. The course of study
was of four years, but the law forbade any entrance examinations on
subjects outside of the usual work done in the rural common schools.
The biographies of Grant, of Sherman, of Sheridan, of Ormsby
Mitchell, and of others show that they in fact had little or no
other preparatory education than that of the common country school.
[Footnote: Grant, in his Personal Memoirs (vol.