The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-01-09
GENERAL KAurz AND WEST POINT.

the tOlumDi2y mas just Dl1 gOOI-Oyt 10 u1S
command and gone upon the retired list
of the regular army. General Kautz was
a distinguished soldier of the Union; he
fought IN both the armies of the East and
the West. A native of Germany, as a
youth he served in the Mexican war
N the Ohio volunteers; he COM
manded at one time a division of
infantry in the Army of the Potomac. and
rs commander of the cavalry of the Army
of the James he rose to the rank of major
general, and was next to Sheridan the
most enterprising cavalry soldier in the
Army of the Potomac.
His retirement calls to mind how few
West Point officers who were generals
during the rebellion are left on either the
active or retired list of the regular army,
or in civil life. On the retired list we find
Augur, Baird, Carroll, ingalls,, Newton,
Long, Pope, Rosecrans, Wilcox, t. ].
Wood, Wright. Cullum, Brannon, Getty,
Parke, A. J. Smith. William F. Smith.
Fitz John Porter, Stoneman, Howe,
Doubleday. Fry, Gibbon. Pleason-
ton. On the active list there remain Scho-
field, Howard, Stanley, Merritt, Ruger,
McCook, Carr. Carlin, Forsythe and
Henry. General Stanley will be retired
June Of this year, General Howard in
November, 1894, and General Schofeld in
September, 1885. So that by January 1.
1896, Generals Ruger and Merritt will be
the only West Pointers left on the active
list who rose to be brigadier generals
during the rebellion.
Turning to civil life the only West Point
Uaion generals who survive are Buell.,
Couch, Slocum, Franklin. Hamilton,
Webb, Gregg, Corse, Ames, Reyes. Averell
and George s. Greene. General Miles, who
will command the army probably when
General Schofield is retired, was dis
tinguished soldier of the Union who
entered the war from civil life. The
superiority of the West Point graduate
over the volunteer general was made
clearly manifest in both the Union and
Confederate army. The only volunteer
generals who rose to the level of West
Point military capacity in the field were
Logan, Miles, Blair. Croker, Hovey, John
E. Smith, Stannard, Chamberlain, Beaver,
Barlow, Birney, Terry, Brooke, Cox.
Opdycke, Ransom, Steedn1an and n. N.
Curtis. General Philip Kearney was not
graduate of West Point, but he had
been all his life soldier, having served in
our regular army in the Mexican war and
subsequently in the French army in
Algiers, in the Crimea and at Solferino.
The superiority of the West Pointer for
war was due to his education. The ODE
dience to authority to which the cadet is
subjected during his life at the military
academy controls his habits of thought
and body. trains him to more thorough
self-confdence and self-command, and we
find nothing that approaches it in our
ordinary college discipline, which exer-
cises only the most vague control over the
students. 1t is not so much the speed
with which a boy is hurried through his
books as it is the habits of thought, self
control, self-reliance and self-restraint he
gets on the way. The forcing process" is
the curse of American educational life.
Less haste, more discipline, more thor
oughness and more practical edge to in
struction is what is needed at school and
college, and in these respects West Point
is superior to our so-called high schools
and colleges for the making of boys into
efficient men. West Point does for its
cadets all that is really done by the
ordinary college course and the subsequent
special scientific school. The general
literary culture of the future officer is
carefully attended to, as anybody can
see who has read the clear, graphic,
sinewy, sound English of Sherman's
Memoirs; of his military reports, and who
remembers his frequent public speeches,
superior in easy command of pure,
nervous, accurate English, at once simple
and forcible, and not seldom colored with
poetic hue. Anybody who will take the
trouble TO read the official correspondence
of Grant and Haileek for January, 1864,
before Grants appointment to the chief
command, will discover that Grant was
not only very strong thinker, but could
express himself with great power of clear,
correct and vigorous speech, and the calm,
eguable, sustained style of his Memoirs was
warmly praised by the most critical OF
English newspapers. If it be said that
Grant and Sherman are exceptional in
stances, We point to the military reports
and official correspondence of Sheridan,
Mcdowell, Humphreys. Buell.. Porter,
Pope, Hancock, Halteck, Rosecrans, Crook,
HAGEN. or indeed any West Point officer
a. he, e ~. l..
during the war.
The Confederate West Point officers
show the same proof of the sound English
literary training of West Point. Lee,
Bragg. Joe Johnston, Jackson, Longstreet,
Beauregard. Early, Hood. Hill, Hardee
were ali excellent writers, and the Century
Naqasiae war papers are full of Testimony TO
the literary ability of the West Point sur
yiyors OF the war on both sides. Their
literary culture is prosecuted just far
enough so that they escape both the tame
ness and the turgid, stilted quality OF the
classical" college style. There is swing
ing, elastic, route step" stride in their
style and an outdoor glow at times that is
refreshing. Sheridan's cavalry bugle blast
that 'sent them whiring up the valley"
Grants picture of Buffers 'bottling him
self up" st Bermuda Hundred, suggested
10 him by General Humphreys; sherman s
famous sentence concerning negro suffrage
that "the hand that Yields the muskei
| for the dag cannot consistently be barred
out from the ballot-box" are illustrations
Of happy individuality and spontaneity