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GENERAL EMORY UPTON—THE ARMY'S MAHAN

RICHARD C . BROWN*

ON THE morning of March 15, 1881,General Upton's Chinese servant en- tered the general's bedroom. He

walked to the side of the bed and found the general dead, a suicide, with a bullet through his head.'

Upton's tragic death caused considerable comment and discussion in the press and in professional military circles.̂ He had been a popular and talented officer with a solid repu- tation both as a fighting soldier and a bril- liant student of military science. In fact, Upton was one of the first American military men to treat land "warfare as though it might be a matter for scientific or profes- sional study."' No one will ever know why General Upton committed suicide but the consensus was that he had performed the act while mentally deranged from pain caused by an ailment diagnosed as "chronic ca- tarrh.""*

Three periods of Upton's life were of paramount importance in shaping his ideas. The first was his training at West Point

*This paper was presented by Dr. Brown ar rhe 1952 meering of the Mississippi Valley Hisrorical Association, and results from his researches while doing his doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin.

iPeter S. Michie, Tbe Life and Letters of Emory Up- ton (New York, 1885), pp. 492.493.

^See, for example. Army and Navy Journal, Vol. 18, pp. 707, 728, 730, 771.

^American Historical Review, Vol. 21, April, I9I6, p. 605; Army and Navy Journal, Vol. 18, p. 667.

*"THe Suicide of General Upton," Army and Navy Journal, Vol. 18, pp. 667-668; Michie, op. cit., pp. 474- 504; "Emory Upton," Dictionary of American Biogra- pby. Vol. 19; Tbe National Cyclopedia of American Biograpby, Vol. 4, p. 276.

where he entered in 1856 after a year at Oberlin College. Even as a boy he had ar- dently admired the military profession and had once made a wager with a young friend that he would see fighting in a great war and would become a general before he was forty- five.° Upton's cadet days served to strengthen his loyalty to the constitution and the union while they gave him the best military educa- tion available in the United States at that time.

He graduated in May, 1861, eighth in a class of forty-five, and received immediately the assignment to drill Federal volunteers in Washington. Two months later he partici- pated in the first Battle of Bull Run, receiv- ing the first of the three wounds resulting from his service in many major engagements of the war. His rise during that conflict was meteoric, for he combined great dash and courage with a knowledge of tactics and a confidence in his own ability which belied his youth. When the war ended he was a briga- dier-general of volunteers even though he was only twenty-five years of age.°

Four years of service in the Civil War represented the second great formative pe- riod in Upton's life. He saw during the War's earliest days the woeful lack of train- ing of the Federal volunteers and their offi-

^RecoIIecrions of Father O'Reilly, printed in Michie, op. cit., p. 7.

«Michie, op. cit., pp. 42.178; Upton is mentioned fa. vorably in Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Vol. II, pp 223-225, 234236; Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheri- dan, Vol. II, pp. 27.29.

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126 MILITARY AFFAIRS Fall

cers which was largely responsible for the rout at Bull Run. Then he saw raw recruits turn into valorous, disciplined soldiers as they gained experience from a multitude of subsequent battles. He became convinced that a trained army, available to the national government at the start of the war, could quickly have ended the rebellion.*̂

The third formative experience started in 1875 when Upton made a trip around the world observing the military organizations of the countries he passed through. General Sherman and Upton had talked informally for several years about such a trip and the type of information which might be gained from it. Sherman wrote to Upton, European armies "have been studied by American offi- cers and authors until we know all that seems applicable to our system of government."* So Upton's orders read to proceed first to Asia and spend the bulk of his time observ- ing the armies of that continent. He and two companions left San Francisco in Au- gust, 1875, and spent the next eighteen months on the mission.

When Upton returned to the United States he submitted his report to the Secre- tary of War in December, 1877.° General Sherman had promised aid in getting the re- port printed but the penurious War Depart- ment furnished no funds.'" Nevertheless, Upton's experiences had convinced him that his country was following a false and dan- gerous military policy, so he tried to bring his ideas to the public's attention by printing the report at his own expense.

The report came out in book form in 1878

^This view is set forth in a number of places in Up- ton's works; see especially. The Military Policy of the United States, pp. 227-262 (Senate Document No. 494, 62nd Congress, 2nd Session, 1912).

^Letter of instructions from General Sherman to Up- ton, dated July 12, 1875.

^Letter of transmittal from General Upton to the Adjutant-General dated December 15, 1877.

lOLetter of instructions from General Sherman to Upton, dated July 12, 1875.

entitled The Armies of Asia and Europe." In it Upton used a comparative approach, comparing the weak military forces of the United States with those of other countries. The potential military strength but the ac- tual military weakness of the Chinese Empire especially impressed General Upton. The cause of the weakness he deduced as the lack of centralized control of the Chinese military forces. He drew an obvious comparison be- tween the Chinese system, where the prov- inces supported the military forces necessary for the defense of the Empire as a whole, and the traditional military policy of the United States where the states trained and controlled the militia.'^ The well-trained military organizations of the European coun- tries also impressed Upton and he enlarged on those features which, in his judgment, the United States should imitate.

The published report ended with fifty- four pages of conclusions that were really a recommended reorganization of our army and reorientation of our military policy.'̂ The report had no immediate discernible effect, although his recommendations caused con- siderable discussion in professional military circles.

Apparently Upton realized the compara- tive approach did not dramatize sufficiently the need for military reform. Shortly after The Armies of Asia and Europe was pub- lished, he decided to try a different approach. In 1878 he began a historical study of the military policy of the United States and con- tinued until his death his researches and writing, submitting chapters as he finished

l^General Emory Upton, The Armies of Asia and Europe: Embracing Official Reports on the Armies of Japan, China, India, Persia, Italy, Russia, Austria, Ger- many, France, and England. Accompanied by Letters Descriptive of a Journey from Japan to the Caucasus (New York, 1878).

mbid., pp. 19 and 29-30. 13Upton, The Armies of Asia and Europe, pp. 313-

367.

GENERAL EMORY UPTON THE A R M Y ' S M A H A N 127

them for the criticism of Colonel Henry A. DuPont, General Sherman and General James A. Garfield, at that time a member of the House of Representatives."

It is interesting to observe that both Ma- han and- Upton used the historical approach in their most influential works. But their philosophies and objectives differed. Mahan adopted a positive approach, demonstrating how a strong navy helped create a great na- tion. He thought and wrote in terms of the offensive, of thrusting outward, and used his liistorical method to point the path the United States, in his opinion, should follow. Upton's approach was negative, but some- what more intimate since he wrote of the his- tory of his own country. He thought and wrote in terms of the defensive, of holding on to what we already had. He designed his historical study to show that, unless we changed our traditional military policy, our nation as we knew it would end disastrously, struck down by foreign invasion or over- whelmed by rebellion from within.

Upton's uniqueness lies not only in what he wrote but also in the fact that he wrote when he did. The fifteen-year period from 1865 to 1880 one historian of our army de- scribed as "The Army's Dark Ages."'^ Dur- ing this period the American government and people, tired of war and concerned with conquering the West, let the armed forces slip to unprecedentedly low levels.'* Sepa- rated from Europe by a broad ocean and bor- dered by militarily weak neighbors, our country seemed safe from invasion. Yet it was during this period that Upton attempted to point out that our traditional military policy left us dangerously undefended. He

^^Ibid., see lerters printed on pages 417-425. "William A. Ganoe, The History of the United

States Army, title of Chapter IX (2nd Edition, New York, 1942).

"Loc. cit.

was the precursor of the "Preparedness Movement."

Upton's ideas can be classified under two broad hearings. The first group includes technical military reforms recommended by Upton because he had seen how efficiently they worked in the modern European armies. Under this heading would be placed such in- novations as a general staff system, compul- sory retirement of army officers at a certain age, examinations to determine fitness for promotions, interchangeable appointments between staff and line, the three-battalion sys- tem and a system of advanced military edu- cation. All of these, with the possible excep- tion of the creation of a general staff, could have been accomplished within the frame- work of traditional American military policy.

The ideas which fall into the other cate- gory were far more significant, for they dia- metrically opposed our traditional military policy and could not be accomplished without a drastic change of that policy. The tradi- tion of states' rights and the tradition of the volunteer soldier have both been very strong in our military policy. In the Militia Act of 1792 Congress turned over to the states much of the responsibility for training a military force. This system of preparing for and waging war as if "we were a confederacy in- stead of a nation"^^ Upton condemned in his study of our military policy.

To replace our traditional policy, Upton recommended a military system consisting of three elements. The first, the Regular Army, was to consist of professional soldiers and to be organized in proportion to the population, not to exceed one thousand in one million. Upton envisioned as the second element units to be called the National Volunteers, or- ganized in peacetime on the basis of one bat- talion to every Congressional district and officered and supported by the national gov-

l^Upton, Military Policy, p. xiii.

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ernment. In war time the National Volun- teer units would be expanded to full strength by volunteers or, if that failed, by con- scriptees. The Militia would remain as the third element and would continue to be sup- ported exclusively by the states. But the Militia would be used only "to execute the laws, suppress insurrections, and repel inva- sions."'' By placing our reliance on a mili- tary force the bulk of which was controlled by the national government, Upton attempt- ed to alter the ttadition of states' rights in military affairs.

Upton denied the tradition of the volun- teer soldier by his declaration, made in 1878, that "every able-bodied male citizen, between certain ages, owes his country military serv- ice ""' We have only to remember the land bounties and pensions paid to veterans, the bounties for enlistment and the draft riots of the Civil War to show that Ameri- cans have regarded military service, not as something owed their country, but something for which they should be rewarded. But as early as 1878 General Upton recommended that the national government should abandon all payment of bounties for enlistment, rely- ing upon its right to draft men into the serv- ice. Furthermore, the conscription machinery should be set up in peace time, ready to function the moment war was declared.̂ "

Upton's ideas became known to young army officers in various ways. Those who had not known him personally could read his Armies of Asia and Europe which contained many of his ideas. In 1885 his friend, Peter S. Michie, published a biography of Upton, setting forth his ideas as well as telling the story of his life.^' Michie had read Upton's unfinished manuscript on our military policy and presumably other ofRcers had read it, be-

IViiV., p. xiv. lOUpton, Armies of Asia and Europe, p. 323. '«Ibid., pp. 323.324. 21Michie, op. cit., see especially pp. 416.484.

cause it was quite generally known, even be- fore it was published, that such a manuscript existed.̂ ^ No doubt other professional array officers had ideas similar to Upton's, but his works guided, systematized and articulated their thoughts.

Upton died at the age of forty-two and never got beyond the second year of the Civil War in his study of our military policy. If he had lived to finish and publish The Mili- tary Policy of the United States, his fame and influence on his contemporaries might have rivaled Mahan's. With twenty years more of life his output of written material might have approached Mahan's one hun- dred and twenty articles and twenty-one ma- jor works."^ Upton's influence might have resulted in a modernization of the Army be- fore the Spanish-American War as Mahan's influence assisted in the building of a modern navy. But history is concerned, not with what might have been, but with what was. Upton died in 1881, his career scarcely begun.

The Spanish-American War revealed in dramatic fashion the necessity for reform within the War Department and the Army. Public airing of the scandals and the tragic bungling of the war created interest in re- form that had not been apparent during the period when Upton lived. Elihu Root be- came Secretary of War and during his in- cumbency in that office put the American Army well on the way to becoming a modem

24

army. Root learned of Upton's ideas through

22For example, see The National Cyclopedia of Amer- ican Biography, Vol. 4, p. 276. It was published in 1897, seven years before The Military Policy of the United States was published, yet it mentions that Uptoti had written such a manuscript.

23William E. Livezey, Mahan on Sea Power (Norman, Oklahoma, 1947), footnote, p. 17.

2<PhiIip C. Jessup, Elihu Root (Boston, 1938), Vol. I, Part i n , pp. 215.407, describes Root's tenure as Secretary of War; see also General William H . Carter's tribute to Root's service, "Elihu Root," North American,. Vol. 178, Jatiuary, 1904, pp. 110.121.

GENERAL EMORY UPTON THE A R M Y ' S M A H A N 129

Major Carter, a young aide in the War De- partment. Carter brought one day to the Secretary of War a copy of Upton's The Armies of Asia and Europe. Root read it with great interest and also read Michie's biogra- phy, thereby learning of Upton's historical study of our military policy. '̂ This led to a search for the manuscript. When it was found, the War Department had it printed as a public document, twenty-three years after Upton's death.^" Upton's works became Root's chief reliance and he acknowledged their influence in a letter to his biographer, declaring "They gave me the detail on which I could base recommendations and overcame my ignorance as a civilian."^'

Root wrote a preface to Upton's study of our military policy, praising Upton's pre- science and pointing out how much of the recent Army legislation had been patterned on Upton's recommendations. ̂

Few people had heard Upton's name be- tween the time of his death in 1881 and the publication of his unfinished manuscript in 1904. Between 1904 and 1917, however, as American military policy continued to follow the lines he had recommended, his name be- came much more familiar. Upton's Military Policy of the United States became the Bible for those who advocated control of all our land forces by the national government and for those who sparked the "Preparedness Movement" before World War I. Further- more, it was a Bible printed at government expense.

The War Department sponsored the print- ing of four impressions of the book between 1904 and 1917, and in 1916 published an epitome of the work "In order to bring to the attention of our citizens the facts of our mili-

tary history as bearing upon the present problem of national preparedness for de- fense."'° The whole book appeared twice as a Senate Document^" and the House of Rep- resentatives ordered that part dealing with the Mexican War published as a House Document in 1914.̂ ' Upton's work still had some popularity in the pre-World War II period, for in 1941 Senator Hayden spon- sored the printing of a document entitled "Evil Effects of Short-Term Army Enlist- ments; Extracts from The Military Policy of the United States by Emory Upton."^^ Figures furnished by the Superintendent of Documents show that over 6,500 copies of The Military Policy of the United States were sold, and 5,727 copies of the epitome of the work.''

Furthermore, popular writers who espoused preparedness used Upton's work as a basic document for factual information about our military policy. One of the most active of these was Frederick L. Huidekoper who or- ganized in 1912 the Army League of the United States. In 1915 Huidekoper pub- lished a book called The Military Unpre- paredness of the United States.^* Huidekoper acknowledged in his preface to the book that he had used "either in whole or in part, near- ly all of the most important paragraphs" of Upton's wotk.''̂ A sampling of other books

^^lessup. op. cit., pp. 241.242. 26War Department Document 290, 1904. 2'Root to Jessup, January 23, 1934, printed in Jes-

sup, op. cit., p. 243. 28Upton, Military Policy, Preface, pp. iv-v.

29Preface (signed by General Hugh L. Scott. Secre- tary of War ad interim). Epitome of Upton's Military Policy of the United States, War Department Document No. 505, 1916.

äOSenate Document No. 494. 62nd Congress, 2nd Session; Senate Document No. 379, 64th Congress, 1st Session.

31House of Reptesentatives Document No. 972, 63rd Congress. 2nd Session.

32Senate Document No. 90, 77th Congress, 1st Ses- sion.

33Letter from Superintendent of Documents, Govern- ment Printing Office, to author, January 13, 1952.

s-lFtederick L. Huidekoper, The Military Unprepar- edness of the United States: A History of American Land Forces from Colonial Times until June 1, 1915 (New York, 1915).

^^Ibid., Preface, pp. vii-viii.

130 MILITARY AFFAIRS Fail

and articles urging preparedness shows that other writers did the same, although not all of them gave credit to their sources as Huide- koper did.'"

Upton's name and his ideas began to ap- pear in hearings held by House and Senate Committees to consider military legislation during the pre-World War I period. Secre- tary of War Garrison, testifying in favor of his plan for a continental army, spoke of Upton as a "great military authority,"" and said that the continental army was "the un- questioned evolution of General Upton's mind."^* Brigadier General A. L. Mills quoted from Upton's "well-known work. The Military Policy of the United States."^'' Assistant Secretary of War Breckenridge praised Upton as "the greatest military phi- losopher who has ever written in this coun- try."*"

36See, as examples, Harold C. Washburn, Tbe Amer- ican Blind Spot (New York, 1917); Eric F. Wood, Tbe Writing on tbe Wall (New York, 1917); A. Col- ton, "Adequate Defense on an American Basis," Forum, Vol. 57, March, 1917, pp. 265-274; "America Un- ready," Literary Digest, Vol. 50, June 5, 1915, pp. 1314-1316; L. A. Mead, "America's Danger and Oppor- tunjry," Survey, Vol. 35, October, 1915, pp. 90-92; "Cost of Unpreparedness," World's Work, Vol. 31, November, 1915, p. 32; "Defense a Present Need," Reyiew oí Reviews, Vol. 52, September, 1915, pp. 259- 269; F. H . Giddings, "Democracy of Military Service," Annals of tbe American Academy, Vol. 66, July, 1916, pp. 173-180; "Eleventh-Hour Preparedness," Independ- ent, Vol. 89, February 26, 1917, pp. 343-344; G. B. Duncan, "Milirary Preparedness: What Does It Mean?" Nortb American, Vol. 202, October, 1915, pp. 509-516; C. H. McCarthy, "National Preparedness" as Illustrared by American Hisrory," CatboUc World, Vol. 102, March, 1916, pp. 787-795; Robert R. McCormlck, "Ripe for Conquesr," Century, Vol. 91, April, 1916, pp. 833- 839.

3^Hearings Before the Committee on Military Affairs, House of Representatives, 64th Congress, Ist Session, 1916, Vol. I, p. 12.

^^Hearings Before rhe Committee on Milirary Affairs, House of Representatives, 64th Congress, 1st Session, I9I6, Vol. I, p. 43.

3876i¿, Vol. II, p. 962. ^^Ibid., Vol. I, p. 131. For other testimony showing

Upton's influence, see that of General Bliss, pp. 176-186, General Scott, pp. 141-176, and General Carter, pp. 105. 139, Hearings Before the Commmitre on Milirary Af- fairs. United States Senate, Sixty-Fourth Congress, 1st

During the twentieth century the tradi- tions of states' rights in military affairs and the volunteer soldier have gradually broken down, although they have not disappeared entirely. The process was especially marked in the decade before World War I. The Militia Act of 1903 established a measure of national control over the state militia. The National Defense Act of 1916 ended the practice of state-controlled volunteers and gave the President power to draft the Na- tional Guard into federal service.*' In 1911 a bill was introduced into the Senate which sought to create a force of National Volun- teers exactly as Upton had recommended. Senator Henry DuPont, at the time Chair- man of the Senate Military Affairs Commit- tee, introduced this bill. He was the man to whom Upton sent chapters of his manuscript for criticism more than three decades be- fore.*^ This bill was never passed, but in 1914 Congress passed an act "For Raising the Volunteer Forces of the United States in Time of Actual or Threatened War," a stand-by act, based in part on the bill intro- duced by DuPont."'

Upton's declaration that every able-bodied male between certain ages owes his country military service forms the basis of many of the arguments in favor of compulsory mili- tary training. General Hugh Scott tells in his autobiography how he presented a copy of Upton's Military Policy to Secretary of War Baker in an attempt to convince him in 1916 of the necessity for compulsory military

Session, 1916; see also Senate Hearings, "Universal Mihrary Training, 1916.17," passim.

4lOliver L. Spaulding, The United States Army in War and Peace (New York, 1937), pp. 407-408; see also Frederick J. Todd, "Our National Guard; An In- troduction to Its History," Journal of tbe American Military Historical Foundation, Vol. 5, 1941, pp. 73 and 152.

•iSMichie, op. cit., pp. 417-420; "Henry Algernon DuPont," Who's Wbo in America, Vol. 7, 1912-13.

oSGanoe, op. cit., p. 448 (Act of April 25, 1914).

1953 GENERAL EMORY UPTON THE A R M Y ' S MAHAN 131

training.** Although no compulsory train- ing act was passed at that time, the discus- sion of compulsory military training prior to World W a r I probably caused the public to accept more readily the Selective Service Act when we entered the War.

Of course, Upton's recommendations were not solely responsible for the development of military legislation along these lines. The national government had begun to exert more control in all phases of our hfe, not alone in the field of military policy. The men who lined up quietly to register for the draft in 1917 did not do so entirely because they had accepted Upton's belief that they owed military service to their country. They had come to know and to respect the power of the national government and the growth of advertising techniques had made them much more susceptible to the publicity campaigns preceding the registration periods. Upton's ideas were unacceptable before the Spanish- American War, but met with success in the twentieth century because they fitted in with the trend of the times. Similarly, part of Mahan's success can be attributed to the fact that his writings fitted in with the tenor of the times.

-̂̂ General Hugh L. Scott, Some Memories of a Sol- dier, pp. 557-558 (New York, 1928).

The army which we raised during World War I was very different from the land forces that fought in the Spanish-American War. It was the first of our modern war- time armies. A General Staff guided its ef- forts. Its higher ranking officers had been trained for their duties by a system of ad- vanced military education. Its lower ranking officers received their commissions from the President, not from the governors of the states. The state militia troops when drafted into the national service during World War I gave up their state names and numerical designations and accepted a new federal designation. Those who enlisted did so, not for a short period, but for the duration of the war. The army was raised by a combina- tion of volunteering and conscription, with emphasis on the latter.

Many of the differences between the two war-time armies resulted from recommenda- tions originally made by General Upton, put into effect by Secretary of War Root or be- cause of the publicity given them by various writers who borrowed heavily from General Upton's works. If Admiral Mahan helped create a modern American Navy, General Emory Upton deserves credit for an even greater part in the creation of a modern American Army.