Take time to drill the soldier.
We are growing very strong in military force. The legions of men pouring into Virginia from the South, and into the places of rendezvous from all our own interior counties, are preparing a bulwark against invasion which the enemy cannot surmount or penetrate. Our officers are giving great attention to the drill. Our ranks are filled with material altogether too good to be sacrificed to want of discipline and tactics. It would be criminal to throw raw forces of splendid recruits into battle without the advantage of practice and instruction. The lives of such soldiers as the South has sent to this war are altogether too precious to be sacrificed by precipitancy of this sort. Time should be taken to drill our forces, and to drill them well. They learn aptly and rapidly. They will make good regulars in as many weeks as commoner material requires months for the operation.--We enjoy peculiar advantages in the possession of drill officers. The two schools of West Point and Lexington have filled Virginia with excellent drill officers. The admirable volunteer companies of our Southern cities have also proved an excellent military school, and have furnished numerous tactical instructors to our new levies of troops. With so many advantages for hastening and perfecting the instruction of our troops in the drill and the manual exercises, it would be very unwise — it would be almost criminal — to disregard these advantages and rush our forces unprepared into the face of the enemy.One of the most important arms of the peculiar service that will be required in Virginia, and that which we can multiply to any extent whatever, is that of cavalry. But it takes time to convert a company of horse into a troops of dragoons. A thoroughly trained troop of dragoons will run down and cut to pieces eight times their number of ordinary cavalry. The efficiency of no service is so much augmented by drill as that of cavalry.--It is not only the man who is to be trained, but the horse. It is not only quickness and skill in manœuvre that is to be learnt by man and beast, but the important matter of expertness in the broad sword exercise that is to be acquired. The broad sword is the peculiar weapon of the dragoon, as the bayonet is that of the foot soldier. Pistols and carbines only prove encumbrances in the real encounter for which military science designs the dragoon.--The percussion given by the weight and swiftness of the animal, and the terrible execution committed by the broad sword in the hands of men trained to use it, and to keep their saddles under any shock — these are the true uses of cavalry. It requires much more time and drill to make a dragoon than to make a foot soldier, and every day gained by our numerous cavalry corps for the drill may save hundreds of soldiers to the Southern cause.
It is true that men on horseback, companies of mounted men, armed with pistols and double- barrel guns, loaded with the wire buckshot cartridge, constitute a formidable arm of defence, and even of assault; but these are valuable as men on horseback, not as dragoons. They may, in superior numbers, successfully resist charges of dragoons, by firing into them at a little distance, disorganizing their line, and breaking the shock of their charge; but in the charge itself they cannot cope with the dragoon and the broad sword. The rangers are invaluable skirmishers; but in the battle itself, then the dragoon is worth more than many rangers. The case is precisely analogous to that of the rifle corps and the regular infantry. The rifle will do well at a distance, but when it comes to the charge the rifle is hopelessly useless against the bayonet. By all means let our regular cavalry be well drilled in the use of the broad sword. Let us have a few regiments of dragoons sufficiently well trained to hold their own, and more than hold it, against any dragoons of the regular service. Let them not be precipitated upon regular forces too hastily. Their lives are too precious not to be guarded by so plain a precaution as thorough drilling. When this grave object is sought and diligently striven for, festina levte is an excellent motto for a careful General.
But while these obvious considerations require precaution against too hastily precipitating our main forces into conflict, the same reasons do not prevent our guerilla forces from threatening the enemy on every side, and in every annoying manner. These may pick off his scouts, capture his foraging parties, drive in his lawless bands, and confine him rigidly in his lines. It is not tactics or the drill that guerillas need; it is activity that never sleeps, enterprise that nothing baffles, courage that nothing daunts.
