Robert Underwood Johnson, Clarence Clough Buell, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: The Opening Battles. Volume 1.

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[94] their services to the governor of their native State. General Scott had planted himself firmly on the theory that the regular army must be the principal reliance for severe work, and that the volunteers could only be auxiliaries around this solid nucleus which would show them the way to perform their duty, and take the brunt of every encounter. The young regulars who asked leave to accept commissions in State regiments were therefore refused, and were ordered to their own subaltern positions and posts. There can be no doubt that the true policy would have been to encourage the whole of this younger class to enter at once the volunteer service. They would have been field-officers in the new regiments, and would have impressed discipline and system upon the organization from the beginning. The Confederates really profited by having no regular army. They gave to the officers who left our service, it is true, commissions in their so-called “provisional” army, to encourage them to expect permanent military positions if the war should end in the independence of the South; but this was only a nominal organization, and their real army was made up (as ours turned out practically to be) from the regiments of State volunteers. Less than a year afterward we changed our policy, but it was then too late to induce many of the regular officers to take regimental positions in the volunteer troops. I hesitate to declare that this was not, after all, for the best; for, although the organization of our army would have been more rapidly perfected, there are other considerations which have much weight. The army would not have been the popular thing it was, its close identification with the people's movement would have been weakened, and it, perhaps, would not so readily have melted again into the mass of the nation at the close of the war.

On the 29th of April I was ordered by McClellan to proceed next morning to Camp Dennison, near Cincinnati, where he had fixed the site for a permanent camp of instruction. I took with me one full regiment and half of another. The day was a fair one, and when about noon our railway train reached the camping ground, it seemed an excellent place for our work. The drawback was that the land was planted in wheat and corn, instead of being meadow or pasture land. Captain Rosecrans (later the well-known general) met us as McClellan's engineer officer, coming from Cincinnati with a trainload of lumber. With his compass and chain, and by the help of a small detail of men, he soon laid off the two regimental camps, and the general lines of the whole encampment for a dozen regiments. The men of the regiments shouldered the pine boards, and carried them up to the lines of the company streets which were close to the hills skirting the valley, and which opened into the parade and drill ground along the railway. Vigorous work housed all the men before night, and it was well that it did so, for the weather changed in the evening, a cold rain came on, and the next morning was a chill and dreary one. My own headquarters were in a little brick school-house of one story, and with a single aide (my only staff-officer) we bestowed ourselves for the night in the little spaces between the pupils' desks and the teacher's pulpit. The windy, cheerless night was a long one, but gave place at last to a fickle, changeable day of drifting showers and occasional sunshine, and we were