IS THE ARMY or THE POTOMAC. icallv disciplined troops that they possessed; besides, as it was made, the divisional formation was a good one, and Las been of verv great utility. It next became necessary to provide for the administrative services for provisions, munitions and transports, and to organize artillery reserves, the engineer corps, the pontoon corps, the topographical brigade, the telegraphs and the hospitals. This prodigious labor was accomplished with a rapidity and a success which are extraordinary, when we think that the whole thing had to be achieved without any assistance from the past. 2\ot onh nas there nobody to be found who knew anything, except from hooks, of the management of the numerous threads by which an army is held together and moved : not only was the country destitute of all precedents in the matter ; the number even of those who had travelled in Europe and seen for themselves what a grand collection of troops is, was infinitely small. The American army had no traditions but those of the Mexican campaign of General Scott—a brilliant c^npaign, in which there were many diffi Unities to be overcome, but which presented nothing like the gigantic proportions of the present war. Moreover, in Mexico General Scott had with him the entire regular army, and here there only remained its feeble ruins. In Mexico the regulars were the main body, the volunteers were only the accessory, and, as it were, the ornament. The old general, who was one day asked what he then did to maintain discipline in their ranks. answered, "Oh, they knew that if they straggled off they would be massacred by the guerrillas.’’ The two cases, therefore, had nothing in common, and the management of tlie-e great armies of volunteers, in spite of all the efforts to regularize them, was a problem which offered many unknown data. ' At the Smith the organization of the insurrectionary forces presented fewer difficulties. nic revolutionary government
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