The moral, mental, and physical average of such a body of men
was a long way above that of professional armies, and insured readiness
in acquiring their new calling. But admirable as were the latent
possibilities, and apt as each individual might be, these multitudes
arrived wholly uninstructed; few had even so much as seen a real
soldier; none had any notion at all of what military discipline was, or
how to handle arms, or to manoeuvre, or to take care of their health.
Nor could they easily get instruction in these things, for officers knew
no more than privates; indeed, for that matter, one of the great
difficulties at first encountered lay in the large proportion of utterly
unfit men who had succeeded in getting commissions, and who had to be
toilfully eliminated.
That which was to be done, McClellan was well able to do. He had a
passion for organization, and fine capacity for work; he showed tact and
skill in dealing with subordinates; he had a thorough knowledge and a
high ideal of what an army should be. He seemed the Genius of Order as
he educated and arranged the chaotic gathering of human beings, who came
before him to be transmuted from farmers, merchants, clerks,
shopkeepers, and what not into soldiers of all arms and into leaders of
soldiers. To that host in chrysalis he was what each skillful
drill-master is to his awkward squad. Under his influence privates
learned how to obey and officers how to command; each individual merged
the sense of individuality in that of homogeneousness and cohesion,
until the original loose association of units became one grand unit
endowed with the solidarity and machine-like quality of an efficient
army.
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