WAR PREPARATIONS IN THE NORTH.

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roused by our first reveille in camp. A breakfast was made from somecooked provisions brought with us, and we resumed the duty of organizingand instructing the camp. With the vigorous outdoor life and the fullphysical and mental employment, the depression which had weighed uponme since the news of the guns at Sumter passed away, never to return.

New battalions arrived from day to day, the cantonments were built bythemselves, like the first, and the business of instruction and drill was systema-tized. The men were not yet armed, so there was no temptation to begin toosoon with the manual of the musket, and they were kept industriously employedin marching in single line, by file, in changing direction, in forming column offours from double line, etc., before their guns were put into their hands. Eachregiment was treated as a separate camp with its own chain of sentinels, andthe officers of the guard were constantly busy inspecting the sentinels on postand teaching guard and picket duty theoretically to the reliefs off duty. Schoolswere established in each regiment for field and staff as well as for companyofficers, and Hardee’s “Tactics” was in the hands of everybody who could pro-cure a copy. One of the proofs of the unprecedented scale of our war prepara-tion is found in the fact that the supply of the authorized “ Tactics ” was soonexhausted, making it difficult to get the means of instruction in the companyschools. The arriving regiments sometimes had their first taste of camp lifeunder circumstances well calculated to dampen their ardor. The 4th Ohio, underColonel Lorin Andrews, president of Kenyon College, came just before a thunder-storm one evening, and the bivouac that night was as rough a one as his menwere likely to experience for many a day. They made shelter by placing boardsfrom the fence-tops to the ground, but the fields were level and soon became amire under the pouring rain, so that they were a queer-looking lot when theycrawled out in the morning. The sun was then shining bright, however, andthey had better cover for their heads by the next night. The 7th Ohio ,which was recruited in Cleveland and on the “Western Reserve,” sent aparty in advance to build some of their huts, and though they too camein a rain-storm, they were less uncomfortable than some of the others.In the course of a fortnight all the regiments of the Ohio contingent werein the camp, except the two that had been hurried to Washington. Theywere organized into three brigades. The brigadiers, besides myself, wereGenerals J. H. Bates and Newton Schleich. General Bates, who was thesenior, and as such assumed command of the camp in McClellan’s absence,was a graduate of West Point who had served some years in the regulararmy, but had resigned and adopted the profession of law. General Schleichwas a Democratic senator, who had been in the State militia, and had beenone of the drill-masters of the Legislative Squad, which had drilled upon theCapitol terrace. McClellan had intended to make his own headquarters inthe camp; but the convenience of attending to official business in Cincinnati kept him in the city. His purpose* was to make the brigade organizationspermanent, and to take them as a division to the field when they were a littleprepared for the work. Like many other good plans, it failed to be carriedout. I was the only one of the brigadiers who remained in the service after