WAR PREPARATIONS IN THE NORTH.

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and instruction went on with some approach to regularity, and our rawvolunteers began to look more like soldiers. Captain Gordon Granger, of theregular army, came to muster the reenlisted regiments into the three-yearsservice, and as he stood at the right of the 4th Ohio, looking down the line ofa thousand stalwart men, all in their Garibaldi shirts (for we had not yet gotour uniforms), he turned to me and exclaimed, “ My God ! that such men

should be food for powder! ” It certainlywas a display of manliness and intelli-gence such as had hardly ever been seenin the ranks of an army. There were incamp at that time, three if not four com-panies in different regiments that werewholly made up of under-graduates ofcolleges, who had enlisted together, theirofficers being their tutors and professors.And where there was not so striking evi-dence as this of the enlistment of the bestof our youth, every company could stillshow that it was largely recruited fromthe best nurtured and most promisingyoung men of the community.

Granger had been in the South-westwhen the secession movement began, andhad seen the formation of military compa-nies everywhere, and the incessant drill-ing which Had been going on all winter;while we, in a strange condition of political paralysis, had been doing nothing.His information was eagerly sought by us all, and he lost no opportunity ofimpressing upon us the fact that the South was nearly six months ahead of usin organization and preparation. He did not conceal his belief that we werelikely to find the war a much longer and more serious piece of business thanwas commonly expected, and that, unless we pushed hard our drilling andinstruction, we should find ourselves at a disadvantage in our earlier encoun-ters. What he said had a good effect in making officers and men take morewillingly to the laborious routine of the parade ground and the regimentalschool; for such opinions as his soon ran through a camp, and they were com-mented upon by the enlisted men quite as earnestly as among the officers.Still, hope kept the upper hand, and I believe that three-fourths of us stillcherished the belief that a single campaign would end the war.

Though most of our men were native Ohioans, we had in camp tworegiments made up of other material. The 9th Ohio was recruitedfrom the Germans of Cincinnati , and was commanded by Colonel RobertMcCook. In camp, the drilling of the regiment fell almost completely intothe hands of the adjutant, Lieutenant August Willich (afterward a general ofdivision ), and McCook, who humorously exaggerated his own lack of militaryknowledge, used to say that he was only “ clerk for a thousand Dutchmen,” so

MAJOR-GENERAL GORDON GRANGER.FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.

VOL. I. 7