Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

The first promotion for a man who is a well-drilled soldier is to the rank of corporal; then if he shows capacity, to that of sergeant and then to that of lieutenant.

These officers, therefore, in accordance with their grade during the four years of their cadetship, are supposed to be the best-drilled men, and those who have made the most improvement in the art of being soldiers. The least proficient remain privates.

Let Grant tell his own story of how he rose in efficiency in the ranks:--

I had not been “called out” as a corporal, but when I returned from furlough I found myself the last but one,--about my standing in all the tactics — of eighteen sergeants. The promotion was too much for me. That year my standing in the class, as shown by the number of demerits of the year, was about the same as it was among the sergeants, and I was dropped and served the fourth year as a private.¹

Assuming the perfect accuracy of this, which I do not doubt in the least, I take leave to state the conclusion to which it irresistibly leads my mind:--

Grant evidently did not get enough of West Point into him to hurt him any; he was less like a West Point man than any officer I ever knew. The reader sees how much of a military education I lost in not having gone to West Point to get a military education like that of Grant. The less of West Point a man has the more successful he will be. We see how little Grant had. All of the very successful generals of our war stood near the lower end of their classes at West Point. As examples, take Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman. All the graduates in the higher ranks in their classes never came to anything as leaders of armies in the war. The whole thing puts me in mind of an advertisement I saw in a newspaper in my youth. It contained a recipe for making graham bread out of coarse unbolted flour mixed with sawdust. The recipe ended as follows: “N. B.--the less sawdust the better.”

Notice how little the young student was interested at West Point, in those studies which pertained to the art of war, and in particular