heard the whiz of an Indian arrow on the
frontier, however mediocre might have been all his other claims to
confidence. If he failed, the regular army might bear the shame; if he
succeeded, to the State-House be the glory.

Yet there was always another party of critics, not less intelligent, who
urged the value of general preparations for any duty, as compared with
special,--who held that it was always easier for a man of brains to
acquire technical skill than for a person of mere technicality to
superadd brains, and that the antecedents of a frontier lieutenant were,
on the whole, a poorer training for large responsibilities than those of
many a civilian, who had lived in the midst of men, though out of
uniform. Let us have a fair statement of this position, for it was very
sincere and had much temporary influence. The main thing, it was argued,
was the knowledge of human nature and the habit of dealing with mankind
in masses,--the very thing from which the younger regular officers at
least had been rigidly excluded. From a monastic life at West Point they
had usually been transferred to a yet more isolated condition, in some
obscure outpost,--or if otherwise, then they had seen no service at all,
and were mere clerks in shoulder-straps. But a lawyer who could
manoeuvre fifty witnesses as if they were one,--a teacher used to
governing young men by the hundred,--an orator trained to sway
thousands,--a master-mechanic,--a railway-superintendent,--a
factory-agent,--a broker who could harness Wall Street and drive it,--a
financier who could rule a sovereign State with a rod of (railway)
iron,--such men as these, it was plausibly reasoned, could give an
average army-officer all the advantage of his special training, at the
start, and yet beat him at his own trade in a year.

These theories were naturally strengthened, moreover, by occasional
instances of conspicuous failure, when volunteer troops were intrusted
to regular officers. These disappointments could usually be traced to
very plain causes. The men selected were sometimes men whose West-Point
career would hardly bear minute investigation,--or who had in civil
pursuits forgotten all they had learned at the Academy, except
self-esteem,--or who had been confined to the duties of some special
department, as quartermasters or paymasters, and were really fitted for
nothing else,--or who had served their country by resigning their
commissions, if not by holding them,--or