Civil War History

THE MILITARY EXAMINATION BOARD IN THE CIVIL WAR: A Case Study Stanley L. Swart One of the major problems facing the United States Army in the Civil War was the low quality of many of its officers. Complaints concerning all ranks, from senior generals to brand-new second lieutenants, were sounded throughout the war and have been echoed by most historians since. It is generally agreed that the incredibly rapid expansion of the service, coupled with a large amount of politics and personal favoritism in officer procurement, resulted in an unusually large percentage of officers unfit for their positions.1 Excepting the cases of certain important generals, however, little has been written about the attempts to expel these misfits. Attention should also be given to efforts to dismiss those obscure junior officers, whose names might never grace a history book but whose collective failures could well decide what generals would appear there. This paper will attempt to shed light on this neglected subject, and will be limited to the officers of the volunteer units organized by the states. It was these organizations which formed the great majority of the Union Army. Under the "Act to authorize the employment of volunteers" of July 22, 1861, which provided for the first 500,000 three-year volunteers and was the basis of all later volunteer laws, company officers were to be elected by their men and these officers in turn were to choose the field officers (majors, lieutenant-colonels, and colonels) of the regiments. This election arrangement was repealed quickly, on August 8 of the same year, but was replaced by a section giving the state governors the power to grant all commissions through the rank of colonel.2 At the same time, in a backhanded recognition of the dangers in such procurement methods, Congress included in the original law a proviso unique in American military history to that point:3 1 This is mentioned in such standard histories as: J. G. Randall and David Donald , The Civil War and Reconstruction, (Boston, 1961), pp. 325-26; and Allan Nevins, The War for the Union: The Improvised War, 1861-62, (New York, 1959), I, 160. For a specific example see two telegrams, David Tod to Edwin Stanton and Stanton to Tod, September 11, 1862, War of the Rebellion: A Compüation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, 1880-1901), Ser. Ill, II, 538. 2 Randall and Donald, CiCt-Z War, p. 326; John F. Callan (ed.), The Military Laws of the United States, From the Foundation of the Government to 4 July, 1864 (Philadelphia , 1864), p. 468. 3 Callan, Military Laws, pp. 1-466, passim, for uniqueness; p. 470 for quote. 227 228CIVIL WAR HISTORY Section 10. . . . [T]he general commanding a separate department or a detached army is hereby authorized to appoint a military board or commission of not less than three nor more than five officers, whose duty it shall be to examine the capacity , qualifications, propriety of conduct, and efficiency of any commissioned officer of volunteers within his department or army, who may be reported to the board or commission, and upon such report, if adverse to such officer, and if approved by the President of the United States, the commission of such officer shall be vacated. . . . [italics added] While generals of volunteers were covered by this law, their numbers were small and attempts to dismiss one of them usually received direct and individual treatment by the War Department. In practice, Section 10 meant that the army could by-pass regular court-martial proceedings in ridding itself of unqualified volunteer officers through the rank of colonel, using instead a faster and more informal procedure. These military boards were attacked by people who thought that they could be, and were, used unfairly. Rufus R. Dawes, in 1861 a captain in the Sixth Wisconsin4 (later a part of the Army of the Potomac's famous "Iron Brigade") could not contain his anger even after thirty years. Referring to the actions of his regimental commander in October, 1861, he wrote: Colonel [Lysander] Cutler applied a rigorous policy of weeding out line officers, who, for various reasons were not acceptable...