ly the
proportion of sick horses was enormous. Moreover, while the Southern
troopers generally carried a firearm, either rifle or shot-gun, some
of the Northern squadrons had only the sabre, and in a wooded country
the firearm was master of the situation. During the first two years
of the war, therefore, the Federal cavalry, generally speaking, were
bad riders and worse horse-masters, unable to move except upon the
roads, and as inefficient on reconnaissance as in action. For an
invading army, information, ample and accurate, is the first
requisite. Operating in a country which, almost invariably, must be
better known to the defenders, bold scouting alone will secure it
from ambush and surprise. Bold scouting was impossible with such
mounted troops as Banks possessed, and throughout the Valley campaign
the Northern general was simply groping in the dark.

But even had his cavalry been more efficient, it is doubtful whether
Banks would have profited. His appointment was political. He was an
ardent Abolitionist, but he knew nothing whatever of soldiering. He
had begun life as a hand in a cotton factory. By dint of energy and
good brains his rise had been rapid; and although, when the war broke
out, he was still a young man, he had been Governor of Massachusetts
and Speaker of the House of Representatives. What the President
expected when he gave him an army corps it is difficult to divine;
what might have been expected any soldier could have told him. To
gratify an individual, or perhaps to conciliate a political faction,
the life of many a private soldier was sacrificed. Lincoln, it is
true, was by no means solitary in the unwisdom of his selections for
command. His rival in Richmond, it is said, had a fatal penchant for
his first wife's relations; his political supporters were constantly
rewarded by appointments in the field, and the worst disasters that
befell the Confederacy were due, in great part, to the blunders of
officers promoted for any other reason than efficiency. For Mr. Davis
there was little excuse. He had been educated at West Point. He had
served in the regular army of the United States, and had been
Secretary of War at Washington. Lincoln, on the other hand, knew
nothing of war, beyond what he had learned in a border skirmish, and
very little of general history. He had not yet got rid of the common
Anglo-Saxon idea that a man who has pluck and muscle is already a
good soldier, and that the same qualiti