George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General United States Army
George Gordon Meade, Ed.

[163] had been before, and in consequence they dare not attempt to exercise any control over them. Then, for the most part, they are as ignorant of their duties as the men, and conscious of their ignorance, they feel they cannot have the command over their people that the regular officers do over their soldiers.

Now, the remedy I would propose would be to attach to every regiment of volunteers a colonel, lieutenant colonel, ten captains and twenty sergeants, with two hundred men, from the regular army. Let these officers have the brevet rank of their respective grades, so as to keep them in the army. Let the colonel be taken from the lieutenant colonels, and the captains from the lieutenants. The army can well spare these officers, for it is organized for such a purpose. Then in each regiment you would have enough practical knowledge to give a tone to it, and the volunteer regiments would soon be as efficient as regular troops. But, as it is, the generals know no more than the privates, and it is only by attaching regular officers, as staff officers, that they get along at all.

But I am afraid you will be tired of this digression about volunteers, a subject that must be uninteresting to you, but not so to us, whose lives and reputations are dependent upon their actions. I have been led to make it from my seeing by the papers that a war is about being waged between the volunteers and regulars as to their respective efficiency, and that the volunteers have begun by accusing the regulars of showing the white feather on the 21st at the northeast end of the town.

The truth is, that the regulars, by their attack, caused the enemy to evacuate the battery taken on that day by the Mississippians and Tennesseeans, though, no doubt, their movements were accelerated by seeing the column of volunteers advancing from the front. An unfortunate error, as afterwards was ascertained, occurred in the regulars going to the right, instead of to the left, and after entering the town, owing to an ignorance of the locality, and finding the enemy strong in their front and right, they attempted, as it is called, to outflank them, or turn their right, but soon found they had an insurmountable obstacle in their front, in a stream that could only be crossed by two bridges that were strongly fortified, and after sustaining a terrible fire, they retired. A portion, however, under Captain Backus, First Infantry, went to the left, and in so doing got on top of a house, from whence they could fire into the rear of the battery, and did fire into the rear, killing a great many Mexicans,