in this line of business, and fortunately did not look so far
ahead. To say that as a rule he was utterly green in military matters,
is to do injustice to the words. However, he might be credited with
some enterprise and even audacity, for such certainly were required in
a young man given to serious reflection, who should proposed to
organize a military company, and to command it in the field, when he
scarcely knew a line of battle from a line of rail fence.

Amongst those raising companies were young lawyers who had perhaps
learned to draw an indictment, but who would not then have been able
to draw anything in the military line, unless it were rations, or the
enemy's fire. There were schoolmasters whose only qualifications for
getting men to the front and keeping them there, were based on
experience in teaching young ideas how to shoot. There were farmers,
clerks, and fellows just out of college, some graduates and some
undergraduates, but with not a tried or known military qualification
in the whole squad. I mistake; there was one who recruited a company,
and who had been in the Mexican War, but he was afterward found to
have forgotten most that he had ever learned, and was soon found also
unable, in the matter of legs, to keep up with the procession. And
there was another who had had experience in an earlier regiment raised
in 1861, but he resigned after his first battle. However, with these
miscellaneous qualifications, unaided by experience, the embryo
officers worked energetically to enlist the men. The work was largely,
but not wholly, of the button-holing order. It was not unattended with
exciting incidents. Anxious mothers met the recruiting officers
sometimes in tears and sometimes in wrath. One such, I remember, drove
him from the premises with a pitchfork. It was the first charge he had
met and he retreated. The young man, however, got his recruit. The
method of recruiting at that time would not bear strict investigation.
It shared in the general and unavoidable slip-shodness and haste which
marked the whole work of raising great armies out of an undrilled and
unmilitary population, and on short notice. Troops in large numbers
were needed and that urgently. Political considerations forbade
drafting. They must be raised by volunteering. The inducements were
bounties to the men and commissions to the officers. He who could
raise a company in the least time was looked upon with the greatest
favor and, other t