Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[272] soon as the military police, better organized, prevented soldiers from leaving their tents to visit — the bar-rooms. The sutlers, licensed smugglers, were subjected to the supervision of the provost-marshal, and no strong liquor was tolerated at their stores. It was the Europeans who most strongly resisted this regulation—the Germans from pure loyalty to their lager-bier, the Southerners to drink in secret an alcoholic compound which in America is called brandy (whisky).

The personnel of staffs and administrative departments being once organized and that of the contingents purified, and the first principles of discipline established among the officers, as well as among the soldiers, the great task of drilling the army had yet hardly begun. Indeed, a great assemblage of men resembles a statue of clay, unable to move without breaking and having no vital breath. In order that it may acquire suppleness and agility the recruits must go through a series of exercises and evolutions equally irksome to the teachers and the taught—first singly, then by platoons, by battalions next, and finally by brigades. This task was the more difficult in the American army because instruction was as necessary for the officers as for the men, and because the latter, having no example to encourage them, did not understand the utility of so long an apprenticeship. Their intelligence, however, which rendered them submissive to the voice of chiefs really worthy to command them, soon made them undertake it with ardor. Full of confidence in themselves, they made up their minds, not that it was useless to learn, but that it would be very easy for them to learn anything they wished, the trade of war as well as any other; having enlisted voluntarily, they were determined to do everything in their power to become good soldiers capable of victory.

They were, therefore, of as much value as their chiefs, whose examples exercised an all-powerful influence over the collective spirit, if we may use such an expression, which animates a body of troops. A rapid change took place in those regiments in which the superior officers went assiduously to work and began by learning themselves what they desired to teach their inferiors. There were three of these superior officers to every regiment, or rather battalion, whose effective force numbered from eight to nine hundred