The JVorthern Vohinteers.
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��of our institutions, he says that from tills very fact our army did not have to surround itself with the precautions which are necessarv to guard a mili- tary organization which has no other support than the severitv of its mili- tary regulations.
The practical turn of mind of the American led to employing every man of reputable character who had seen anj' military service. AYith one accord East and West first turned to the old soldiers for officers. I was in Galena, 111., when Fort Sumter was fired on. A company was immediate- ly raised there. I was attracted to the unwonted sight of drill, which was begun at once. The gentleman who had been asked to drill the men was an ex-army officer, and he had assem- bled the company in a vacant lot and was there at work in civilian dress. He had a ramrod in his hand for a sword. With a quiet and business- like air he was patiently teaching the men to put their left feet down to- gether, and to face to the right and left and about. I next saw him in front of Petersburg in ISG-i on horse- back. He was in uniform. He pre- served the same quiet and business- like air. He was in command of the armies, and his name was Ulysses S. Grant.
Much criticism has been uttered upon the unfortunate selection of generals by the president. For a part of these he was not responsible. He appointed them in deference to advisers high in public estimate. As for the rest, looking at the situation in the light thrown backward, I do not see what there was to enable the president to detect military genius except experience. There were few
��sapient enough to criticise the military character of the commanders he ap- pointed at the time. It was easy to do this after they had been proven incompetent. Before the hard fight- ing was half through he had had the wisdom to select Grant and Sherman. If the genei'als to command a great army were to be selected to-day from officers of the army who had never conducted great operations in the field, no one could predict who would prove equal to the great commands. The P>nglish, with an armj' whose drum-beat is heard around the world, do not always find it easy to select a competent commander even to fight naked and half-armed children of the desert.
The incompetent officers of the line in our arm}' were soon weeded out by the rough harrow of war. Their commissions rarely survived a cam- paign. The blunders of some of them were very amusing. Early in the war a company in which I carried a musket had a captain who, it always seemed to me, owed his office to his martial air, for that was all there was martial about him. He never got so that he could remember all the com- mands for drilling the company. One day he deployed them as skirmishers, and then rallied them around himself to repel imaginary cavalry. He then forgot what to sav to straighten them out into line again. The men waited fixed at "charge bayonets." The suspense grew painful. At last the captain thundered out, "Get out there as skirmishers, everj' one of you, or I'll put you all in the guard- house ! " The captain soon afterward resigned, under the advice of an ex- amining board.
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