Into this gaudy assemblage rode Thomas Jonathan Jackson, mounted
on Little Sorrel, a horse as unpretentious as himself, and
dressed in his faded old blue professor's uniform without one
gleam of gold. He had only two staff officers, both dressed as
plainly as himself. He was not a major-general, nor even a
brigadier; just a colonel. He held no trumpeting reviews. He made
no flowery speeches. He didn't even swear. The armed mob at
Harper's Ferry felt that they would lose caste on Sunday
afternoons under a commandant like this. Their feelings were
still more outraged when they heard that every officer above the
rank of captain was to lose his higher rank, and that all new
reappointments were to be made on military merit and direct from
Richmond. Companies accustomed to elect their officers according
to the whim of the moment eagerly joined the higher officers in
passing adverse resolutions. But authorities who were unanimous
for Lee were not to be shaken by such absurdities in face of a
serious war. And when the froth had been blown off the top, and
the dregs drained out of the bottom, the solid mass between, who
really were sound patriots, settled down to work.

There was seven hours' drill every day except Sunday; no light
task for a mere armed mob groping its ignorant way, however
zealously, towards the organized efficiency of a real army. The
companies had to be formed into workable battalions, the
battalions into brigades. There was a deplorable lack of cavalry,
artillery, engineers, commissariat, transport, medical services,
and, above all, staff. Armament was bad; other munitions were
worse. There would have been no chance whatever of holding
Harper's Ferry unless the Northern conglomeration had been even
less like a fighting army than the Southern was.