onest means. The newspapers were used to give fictitious credit
to some and to injure others. If the regular correspondents of the
press had been excluded from the camps, there would no doubt have
been surreptitious correspondence which would have found its way
into print through private and roundabout channels. But this again
was not a vice peculiar to officers appointed from civil life. It
should be always remembered that honorable conduct and devoted
patriotism was the rule, and self-seeking vanity and ambition the
exception; yet a few exceptions would be enough to disturb the
comfort of a large command. To sum up, the only fair way to estimate
the volunteer army is by its work and its fitness for work after the
formative period was passed, and when the inevitable mistakes and
the necessary faults of its first organization had been measurably
cured. My settled judgment is that it took the field in the spring
of 1862 as well fitted for its work as any army in the world, its
superior excellences in the most essential points fully balancing
the defects which were incident to its composition.

This opinion is not the offspring of partiality toward the volunteer
army on the part of one himself a volunteer. It was shared by the
most active officers in the field who came from the regular service.
In their testimony given in various ways during the war, in their
Official Records, and in their practical conduct in the field which
showed best of all where their reliance was placed, these officers
showed their full faith in and admiration for the volunteer
regiments. Such an opinion was called out by the Committee on the
Conduct of the War in its examination of General Gibbon in regard to
the Gettysburg campaign, and his judgment may fairly be taken as
that of the better class of the regular officers. He declared of
some of these regiments in his division, that they were as well
disciplined as any men he ever wished to see; that their officers
had shown practical military talent; that a young captain from civil
life, whom he instanced, was worthy to be made a general. He named
regiments of volunteers which he said were among the finest
regiments that ever fought on any field, and in which every officer
was appointed from civil life. [Footnote: Report of Committee on
Conduct of the War, vol. iv. pp. 444-446.] He added the criticism
which I have above made, that no proper method of getting rid of
incompetent officers and of secu