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met there by General Scott, who reminded me that he was the oldest, as I was the youngest, general in the United States.
I knew the young gentlemen at the table meant no harm, but I thought it was well enough to give them a little lesson.
I said: “You gentlemen of the regulars can doubtless give me, a volunteer general, some information by answering a question.
Can any of you tell me the movement of Napoleon at the battle of Marengo which was the one upon which he wholly relied for his success in that famous battle?”
They looked one to the other and the other to the one, but nobody replied.
I then turned to Captain Haggerty, who sat well down the table, and said: “Captain, can you answer that question?”
“ Yes, General, I think I can.”
“ Then explain to us what that battle was.”
Haggerty gave a very exact account of it, and I said: “I am very much obliged to you, Captain.
You see, gentlemen, it will be convenient during this war to have some volunteer officers along with us, so that if we get into a like predicament with Napoleon we shall have somebody who knows what was done under like circumstances.”
1
The conversation was not renewed.
In due time we separated, and the question of the military superiority of West Pointers was never discussed in my hearing by that set of officers afterwards.
Now, what sort of education does the student get at West Point which enables him to perform the greatest acts of generalship quite independently of his natural abilities of which Grant has kindly given me the credit of having some?
I suppose I am at liberty to take as a sample of the education acquired at West Point, that which enabled one West Pointer to outstrip all volunteer officers, and all West Pointers, engineers, picture drawers, captains of artillery, and captains of cavalry, and stand forth the greatest general of his country and perhaps of the world.
Of course it will be seen that I must refer to General Grant, whom I cheerfully acknowledge to be a great general in very many respects.
How much of his supremacy as a
1 The point of this question may not be recognized by an unprofessional reader. The victory of Marengo which produced greater results to Napoleon than any in his career, was confessedly fought in the utmost confusion without any plan or order of battle, nearly lost by a series of blunders, and won by an accident of which, and over which, Bonaparte had neither knowledge nor control. Jommi calls it an affray, refusing to dignify it by the name of battle, and Matthieu Dumas says Marengo was an enclosed field in which one of two armies must perish. It is distinguished in history above all others by having nothing of the art of war in it.
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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