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[43] ‘greenness’ of his troops, the answer, more specious than well taken, was constantly returned—‘You are green, it is true; but they are green also: you are all green alike.’1 So far from having time to mould his army, many of his regiments were brought across the Potomac at the last moment, without his even seeing them, and without being even brigaded. He had, therefore, no opportunity to test his machinery—to move it round and see whether it would work smoothly or not; and such was the feeling, that when, on one occasion, McDowell had a body of eight regiments reviewed together, he was censured for ‘trying to make a show.’2 Even the special circumstance that should have caused delay,—to wit, the fact that a large part of the best, that is, the best-armed, drilled, officered, and disciplined troops in front of Washington consisted of three months volunteers whose term of service was about to expire,—was an incentive to precipitate action. These troops had fulfilled the duty for which they were called out, which was to assure the safety of the national capital; their presence had given time to organize a force for the war; Congress had authorized a call for five hundred thousand three years volunteers, and these were thronging to the Potomac. It is certainly easy to see that the dictate of prudence was this: not to attempt to employ the three months men in active operations, but to organize and mobilize, from the three-year troops, an adequate army for the field. Other counsels prevailed, and the army with which McDowell took the field was an army without organization, or a staff, or a commissariat, or an organized artillery.3 The wonder, indeed, is not that he
1 Report on the Conduct of the War, vol. i., p. 38.
2 Ibid.
3 ‘Being tete-à--tete with McDowell, I saw him do things of detail which, in any even half-way organized army, belong to the specialty of a chief of the staff. .... McDowell received his corps in the most chaotic state. Almost with his own hands he organized, or rather put together, the artillery. Brigades are scarcely formed; the commanders of brigades do not know their commands, and the soldiers do not know their generals.’ Gurowski: Diary. 1861-2, p. 61. Mr. Russell (My Diary North and South, pp. 424-5) makes some striking statements to the same purpose.
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