y--perhaps because in this old
West Point instructor the haughty dignity and prejudice against
volunteers which characterized too many Regular officers, had its
fullest personification. His Corps embraced the largest number of
Regular officers. In some Regiments they were ridiculously, and for
Uncle Sam expensively, plentiful,--some Companies having two or three
Captains, two or three First or Second Lieutenants,--while perhaps the
enlisted men in the Regiment did not number two hundred. But these
supernumeraries were Fitz John's favorites, and whether they performed
any other labor than sporting shoulder straps, regularly visiting the
Paymasters, adjusting paper collars and cultivating moustaches, was a
matter of seemingly small consequence, though during depressed national
finances.

The little patriotism that animated many of the officers attached to
both of these Head-quarters, did not restrain curses deep if not loud.
Pay and position kept them in the army at the outbreak of the
Rebellion; and pay and position alone prevented their taking the same
train from Warrenton that carried away their favorite Commander. A
telegram of the Associated Press stated a few days later that a list of
eighty had been prepared for dismissal. What evil genius averted this
benefit to the country, the War Department best knows. It required no
vision of the night, nor gift of soothsaying, to foretell the trouble
that would result from allowing officers in important positions to
remain in the army, who were under the strongest obligations to the
General removed, devotedly attached to him, and completely identified
with, and subservient to, his interests. It might at least be supposed
that his policy would be persevered in, and that his interests would not
suffer. So far the reform was not radical.

"Colonel," said one of these martinets who occupied a prominent position
upon the Staff of Prince Fitz John, as with a look of mingled contempt
and astonishment he pointed to a Lieutenant who stood a few rods distant
engaged in conversation with two privates of his command, "do you allow
commissioned officers to converse with privates?"

"Why not, sir? Those three men were intimate acquaintances at home. In
fact, the Lieutenant was a clerk in a dry-goods establishment in which
one of the privates was a junior partner."

"All wrong, sir," replied the martinet. "They should approach a
commissioned officer through a Sergeant. The Inspecting Of