WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1857
431
come forward matured for office, I suppose you must increase the Army according to the requirements of the superabundance of aspirants. You must not only create subordinate; but higher ranks to gratify those who have passed the probationary course, first in the Academy and then in the Army, that they may attain that good which is suggested by the honorable Senator from Michigan. Sir, to this system I object. Genius is slumbering in obscurity all around us. There are few inheritors of genius. It is the common property of mankind, but it is rarely exhibited. A Wash- ington, a Napoleon, a Jackson, may now be in obscurity in private life, having no official friends to obtain him a situation at the Military Academy, or in the Army of the United States. You make officers for the Army as you would make mechanical instru- ments; but, sir, God must stamp the soldier and the general, or the impress is base. If I were to select an army upon which I were compelled to depend to save this Republic, I ,would take for my officers active, energetic men who were distinguished in the common avocations of life; I would take the stripling of eighteen or twenty from his plow-handle, and invest him with the insignia of an officer, and he would feel all the fullness of manhood in his limbs and in his heart. I would not take one who was mechanically formed by artifice; but I would take the man whose instincts were noble, whose thews and muscles were perfect, and could take hardy exercise without discipline and drill, who had had to act and rely on his own resources for posi- tion in life. I would not take men whose position was the mere result of accident or mechanism. I protest against the present system by which an exclusive, privileged order is created, and the result of which is, that you may increase the Army but you can never decrease it. You may tell me that it was decreased after the Mexican war when the volunteers were disbanded and returned to their homes. Sir, these volunteers are the men who are to come forth from the forest in the hour of peril, and save and rescue your country. It is not a tactician, but it is a genius formed by nature that is to lead your armies to victory. The occasion always produces the men. The call of patriotism will bring them forth from their dells, from their mountain tops, from their gorges. They will come forth as a mighty torrent to overwhelm the adversary when one shall come to our soil; and when the mighty work of battle is done, and the redemption of the country is complete, they will
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