regulars--Reasons for the difference--Practical efficiency of the
men--Necessity for sifting the officers--Analysis of their
defects--What is military aptitude?--Diminution of number in
ascending scale--Effect of age--Of former life and
occupation--Embarrassments of a new business--Quick progress of the
right class of young men--Political appointments--Professional
men--Political leaders naturally prominent in a civil war--"Cutting
and trying"--Dishonest methods--An excellent army at the end of a
year--The regulars in 1861--Entrance examinations for West
Point--The curriculum there--Drill and experience--Its
limitations--Problems peculiar to the vast increase of the
army--Ultra-conservatism--Attitude toward the Lincoln
administration--"Point de zele"--Lack of initiative--Civil work of
army engineers--What is military art?--Opinions of experts--Military
history--European armies in the Crimean War--True
generalship--Anomaly of a double army organization.


The work of sifting the material for an army which went on through
the winter of 1861-62, naturally suggests an analysis of the classes
of men who composed both parts of the military force of the
nation,--the volunteers and the regulars. I need add nothing to what
I have already said of the unexampled excellence of the rank and
file in the regiments raised by the first volunteering. Later in the
war, when "bounty jumping" and substitution for conscripts came into
play, the character of the material, especially that recruited in
the great cities and seaports, was much lower. I think, however,
that the volunteers were always better men, man for man, than the
average of those recruited for the regular army. The rigidity of
discipline did not differ so much between good volunteer regiments