instruction went on with some approach to regularity, and our raw
volunteers began to look more like soldiers. Captain Gordon Granger
of the regular army came to muster the re-enlisted regiments into
the three years' service, and as he stood at the right of the Fourth
Ohio, looking down the line of a thousand stalwart men, all in their
Garibaldi shirts (for we had not yet received our uniforms), he
turned to me and exclaimed: "My God! that such men should be food
for powder!" It certainly was a display of manliness and
intelligence such as had hardly ever been seen in the ranks of an
army. There were in camp at that time three if not four companies,
in different regiments, that were wholly made up of undergraduates
of colleges who had enlisted together, their officers being their
tutors and professors; and where there was not so striking evidence
as this of the enlistment of the best of our youth, every company
could still show that it was largely recruited from the
best-nurtured and most promising young men of the community.

Granger had been in the Southwest when the secession movement began,
had seen the formation of military companies everywhere, and the
incessant drilling which had been going on all winter, whilst we, in
a strange condition of political paralysis, had been doing nothing.
His information was eagerly sought by us all, and he lost no
opportunity of impressing upon us the fact that the South was nearly
six months ahead of us in organization and preparation. He did not
conceal his belief that we were likely to find the war a much longer
and more serious piece of business than was commonly expected, and
that unless we pushed hard our drilling and instruction we should
find ourselves at a disadvantage in our earlier encounters. What he
said had a good effect in making officers and men take more
willingly to the laborious routine of the parade ground and the