mbers were gathered in camps throughout the
North for instruction, organization, and equipment.

When Lincoln's first call for troops was made I was at Springfield,
Ohio, enjoying a fairly lucrative law practice as things then went,
but with competition acutely sharp for future great success.

I had, in November, 1856, come from the common labor of a farm to
a small city, to there complete a course of law reading, commenced
years before and prosecuted at irregular intervals. After my
removal to Springfield I finished a preparatory course, and January
12, 1858, when not yet twenty-two years of age, I was admitted to
practice law by the Supreme Court of Ohio, and settled in Springfield,
where I had the good fortune to enjoy a satisfactory share of the
clientage. I had from youth a desire to learn as much as possible
of war and military campaigns, but, save a little volunteer militia
training of a poor kind, obtained as a member of a uniformed military
company, and a little duty on a militia general's staff, I had no
education or preparation for the responsible duties of a soldier--
certainly none for the important duties of an officer of any
considerable command.

Thus situated and unprepared, on the first call for volunteers I
enlisted as a private soldier in a Springfield company, and went
with it to Camp Jackson, now Goodale Park, Columbus, Ohio.( 1)

The first volunteers were allowed to elect their own company and
field officers. I was elected Major of the 3d Ohio Volunteer
Infantry, and commissioned, April 27, 1861, by Governor William
Dennison.

A few days subsequently, my regiment was sent to Camp Dennison,
near Cincinnati, to begin its work of preparation for the field.
Here I saw and came to know in some sense Major-General George B.
McClellan, also Wm. S. Rosecrans, Jacob D. Cox, Gordon Granger,
and others who afterward became Major-Generals. I also met many
others, whom in the campaigns and battles of the succeeding four
years I knew and appreciated as accomplished officers. But many
I met there fell by the way, not alone by the accidents of battle
but because of unfitness for command or general inefficiency.

The Colonel of my regiment (Marrow) so magnified a Mexican war
experience as to make the unsophisticated citizen-soldier look upon
him with awe, yet he never afterwards witnessed a real battle. John
Beatty, who became later a Colonel, then Brigadier-General, was my
Lieutenant-Colonel; he did