rst last. In those unfortunate early days, when it
seemed to most of our Governors to make little difference whom they
commissioned, since all were alike untried, and of two evils it was
natural to choose that which would produce the more agreeable
consequences at the next election-time,--in those days of darkness many
very poor officers saw the light. Many of these have since been happily
discharged or judiciously shelved. The trouble is, that those who remain
are among the senior officers in our volunteer army, in their respective
grades. They command posts, brigades, divisions. They preside at
court-martials. Beneath the shadow of their notorious incompetency all
minor evils may lurk undetected. To crown all, they are, in many cases,
sincere and well-meaning men, utterly obtuse as to their own
deficiencies, and manifesting (to employ a witticism coeval with
themselves) all the Christian virtues except that of resignation.

The present writer has beheld the spectacle of an officer of high rank,
previously eminent in civil life, who could only vindicate himself
before a court-martial from the ruinous charge of false muster by
summoning a staff-officer to prove that it was his custom to sign all
military papers without looking at them. He has seen a lieutenant tried
for neglect of duty in allowing a soldier under his command, at an
important picket-post, to be found by the field-officer of the day with
two inches of sand in the bottom of his gun,--and pleading, in
mitigation of sentence, that it had never been the practice in his
regiment to make any inspection of men detailed for such duty. That such
instances of negligence should be tolerated for six months in any
regiment of regulars is a thing almost inconceivable, and yet in these
cases the regiments and the officers had been nearly three years in
service.

It is to be remembered that even the command of a regiment of a thousand
men is a first-class administrative position, and that there is no
employer of men in civil life who assumes the responsibility of those
under his command so absolutely and thoroughly. The life, the health,
the efficiency, the finances, the families of his soldiers, are staked
not so much on the courage of a regimental commander as upon his
decision, his foresight, and his business-habits. As Richter's worldly
old statesman tells his son, "War trains a man to business." If he takes
his training slowly, he must grow perfect through sufferin