e bestowed on the Government a moral power over the country
vastly in excess of that which it exercised in normal times. This,
however, was really necessary to it if the problem of the Army was to
be handled in the way which was desirable from a military point of
view. Compulsory service could not at first be thought of. It was
never supposed that the tiny regular Army of the United States
Government could be raised to any very great size by voluntary
enlistment, and the limited increase of it which was attempted was not
altogether successful. The existing militia system of the several
States was almost immediately found faulty and was discarded. A great
Volunteer Force had to be raised which should be under the command of
the President, who by the Constitution is Commander-in-Chief of the
forces of the Union, but which must be raised in each State by the
State Governor (or, if he was utterly wanting, by leading local
citizens). Now State Governors are not--it must be recalled--officers
under the President, but independent potentates acting usually in as
much detachment from him as the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford or Cambridge
from the Board of Education or a Presbyterian minister from a bishop.
This group of men, for the most part able, patriotic, and determined,
were there to be used and had to be consulted. It follows that the
policy of the North in raising and organising its armies had at first
to be a policy evolved between numerous independent authorities which
never met and were held together by a somewhat ignorant public opinion,
sometimes much depressed and sometimes, which was worse, oversanguine.
It is impossible to judge exactly how ill or how well Lincoln, under
such circumstances, grappled with this particular problem, but many
anomalies which seem to us preposterous--the raising of raw new
regiments when fine seasoned regiments were short of half their
strength, and so forth--were in these circumstances inevitable. The
national system of recruiting, backed by compulsion, which was later
set up, still required for its success the co-operation of State and
local authorities of this wholly independent character.

Northern and Southern armies alike had necessarily to be commanded to a
great extent by amateur officers; the number of officers, in the
service or retired, who had been trained at West Point, was
immeasurably too small for the needs of the armies. Amateurs had to be
called in, and not only so