ions--Problems peculiar to the vast increase of the
army--Ultra-conservatism--Attitude toward the Lincoln
administration--"Point de zele"--Lack of initiative--Civil work of
army engineers--What is military art?--Opinions of experts--Military
history--European armies in the Crimean War--True
generalship--Anomaly of a double army organization.

The work of sifting the material for an army which went on through
the winter of 1861-62, naturally suggests an analysis of the classes
of men who composed both parts of the military force of the
nation,--the volunteers and the regulars. I need add nothing to what
I have already said of the unexampled excellence of the rank and
file in the regiments raised by the first volunteering. Later in the
war, when "bounty jumping" and substitution for conscripts came into
play, the character of the material, especially that recruited in
the great cities and seaports, was much lower. I think, however,
that the volunteers were always better men, man for man, than the
average of those recruited for the regular army. The rigidity of
discipline did not differ so much between good volunteer regiments
and regulars, as the mode of enforcing it. There were plenty of
volunteer regiments that could not be excelled in drill, in the
performance of camp duty, or in the finish and exactness of all the
forms of parades and of routine. But it was generally brought about
by much milder methods of discipline. A captain of volunteers was
usually followed by his neighbors and relatives. The patriotic zeal
of the men of the company as well as their self-respect made them
easily amenable to military rule so far as it tended to fit them
better to do the noble work they had volunteered for, and on which
their hearts were as fully set as the hearts of their colonels or
generals. In the regular army, officers and men belonged to
different castes, and a practically impassable barrier was between
them. Most of the men who had enlisted in the long years of domestic
peace were, for one cause or another, outcasts, to whom life had
been a failure and who followed the recruiting sergeant as a last
desperate resource when every other door to a livelihood was shut.
[Footnote: Since inducements to enlist have been increased by
offering the chance to win a commission, I believe the quality of
the rank and file of the regulars has been much improved, and as a
natural consequence the officers have found it easy to enforce
dis