for its defense. Our good President, believing, in the honesty of
his heart, that his presence at the front would do good, took the
field. And the Secretary of War and the Chief of Staff went to
issuing orders that no one seemed to obey. Indeed, their orders only
increased the confusion that had already taken possession of
everything military. The regular officers in command of the troops
in the fortifications, and who knew the location and details of the
forts as well as the roads leading to them, were superseded by
strangers, ignorant of all these things, and even of what their
commands consisted.

Why this was, my son, I cannot explain. Perhaps the Secretary of War
will, when he gets his historian, at $2,500 a year, to write a
national history of the war. Some malicious people said the
Secretary of War had two reasons for this: the first, to show his
contempt for military science; the second, because he wanted to show
what fools some of these strange generals were. I have also heard it
intimated that the reason why some of these strange generals were
assigned to such important posts at such a moment of peril to the
nation, was because they were of sufficient consequence to be made
victims. And as it was always necessary to have a victim to cover up
and excuse the blundering of high officials, these men would come in
handy enough. But I never considered this a good excuse for thus
superseding the officers, the only officers who really knew how to
defend the city.

It was not surprising, however, that, with such an opportunity for
gaining distinction as the defense of the capital of the nation,
major and brigadier-generals should spring up as by magic. Their
number was truly marvelous. Nor was it strange that they should all