General Scott, too much bound up in his experience of the Mexican
War, and not foreseeing the totally different proportions which this
must assume, planted himself firmly on the theory that the regular
army must be the principal reliance for severe work, and that the
volunteers could only be auxiliaries around this solid nucleus which
would show them the way to perform their duty and take the brunt of
every encounter. The young regulars who asked leave to accept
commissions in state regiments were therefore refused, and were
ordered to their own subaltern positions and posts. There can be no
doubt that the true policy would have been to encourage the whole of
this younger class to enter at once the volunteer service. They
would have been the field officers of the new regiments, and would
have impressed discipline and system upon the organization from the
beginning. The Confederacy really profited by having no regular
army. They gave to the officers who left our service, it is true,
commissions in their so-called "provisional army," to encourage them
in the assurance that they would have permanent military positions
if the war should end in the independence of the South; but this was
only a nominal organization, and their real army was made up (as
ours turned out practically to be) from the regiments of state
volunteers. Less than a year afterward we changed our policy, but it
was then too late to induce many of the regular officers to take
regimental positions in the volunteer troops. I hesitate to declare
that this did not turn out for the best; for although the
organization of our army would have been more rapidly perfected,
there are other considerations which have much weight. The army
would not have been the popular thing it was, its close
identification with the people's movement would have been weakened,
and it perhaps would not so readily have melted again into the mass
of the nation at the close of the war.