[62] and placed in command of the disorganized forces that had returned from that untoward campaign, and of the rapidly arriving regiments which the ‘populous North’ was pouring down from all directions to Washington. Out of these elements, an army was, first of all, to be fashioned.
General McClellan brought to his high trust proofs of talent which, though not sufficient to show him a proper captain of a great army, were yet enough to inspire the best hopes of him. He had served with distinction in Mexico, had studied war in Europe, was in the flower of his youth, and, above all, had just finished a campaign that, by its success amidst elsewhere general failure, seemed to furnish at once the prestige and prophecy of victory.
The young chieftain threw himself with the utmost ardor and energy into the work of moulding into form an army adequate for the nation's needs. It was a colossal task; for it was necessary not merely to build up an army, but to make the model on which the army should be built. The military traditions of the United States, confined to the single campaign in Mexico, afforded no groundwork for the organization of such a military establishment as was now demanded for the portentous task before the country. The regular army kept on foot previous to the war was limited by law to under twenty thousand men. But its whole internal organism had been disrupted by secession, and it did not even form a cadre on which it was possible to build.
The force around Washington, of which General McClellan assumed command on the 27th of July, numbered about fifty thousand infantry, less than a thousand cavalry, six hundred and fifty artillerymen, with nine imperfect field-batteries of thirty pieces. It still retained the provisional brigadeorgani-zation given it by McDowell; but the utter collapse that followed Bull Run had made it rather a mob than an army. Desertion had become alarmingly numerous, and the streets of Washington were crowded with straggling officers and men absent from their stations without authority, and indicating by their behavior an utter want of discipline and organization.1
