Pointers. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas, the Union champions
_par excellence_, were West Pointers. Lee, Stonewall Jackson,
the Johnstons, and Longstreet are no less conspicuous among the
Confederates. Civilians for the most part were not found in the high
places, or if they were so placed the results were unfortunate, as in
the cases of Butler, Banks, and McClernand. There were of course
good soldiers who came from civil life. Cox himself is a conspicuous
instance, and there were Terry, John A. Logan, and other good division
commanders. On the Southern side may be instanced N.B. Forrest and
J.B. Gordon; but these men rarely attained to more than secondary
positions, the highest places falling, as if by gravitation, into the
hands of West Pointers. An influence there was in the little academy
on the Hudson which somehow brought to pass a superior warlike
efficiency. The training at West Point, supplemented as it usually was
by campaigning on the plains, although duty was done only by men in
squads, and the hardships and perils were scarcely greater than those
encountered by the ordinary pioneer and railroad-builder, somehow
evoked the field-marshal quality and made it easier to grapple
with the tremendous problems with which the army was so suddenly
confronted.

A certain pathos attaches to the story of some of those civilian
soldiers. In my youthful days, I had often seen N.P. Banks, who had
risen from the humblest beginning into much political importance. No
large distinction can be claimed for him in any direction, and for
elevation of character he was certainly not marked; but he was a man
of respectable ability and he climbed creditably from factory-boy to
mechanic and thence (through no noisome paths) to Congress, to the
post of Governor, and to the Speakership at Washington.