The beginning should be with the organization of the general staff, and this should be adapted, for the reasons given, to a state of war. The secretary of the war department being in fact the chief of the staff, the rest of the staff should consist of an able practical general officer, a capable chief officer of the artillery, an effective chief officer of the engineers, a vigilant and experienced quarter-master general, and an intelligent and experienced adjutant general, with one or two commissioned officers, as the service might require, attached to each of these several officers as aids, who should execute under a board of war the details of duty; these superior officers, with others called in, should constitute this council or board for the regulation of all the military details; appoint inspectors of reviews; and such other persons as might be required to aid in the service, such as surgeons, draftsmen, &c. They should divide their duties into the military and the administrative, and have cognizance and control over every branch, always subject to the chief of the staff or secretary at war; they should assemble and deliberate, and their consultations and measures, however minute, with their reasonings or objections, should be daily recorded; and these consultations should, whenever required, be presented to the secretary at war, to the president, or to congress when called for. The military branch should be distributed under the heads following..... MILITARY I.....PLANS AND MEANS OF DEFENSIVE OR OFFENSIVE WAR. 1. This should comprehend a topographical establishment; the preparation of complete maps and surveys of our own country; and a classification of the surface of the Union into districts of equal portions of three, five, or nine parts; and these again into lesser districts; designating all the passes, roads, rivers, &c., in each, with descriptive memoirs and references to each. 2. The police of armies. 3. Military exercises or discipline. 4. Military operations, marchings, and encampments. 5. Movements of troops by water. 6. Military chronology, or daily and other returns, of duties, actions, retreats, &c. &c. FISCAL II.....SUBSISTENCE, PECUNIARY AND CIVIL ADMINISTRATION. 1. Pay, receipts, and expenditures, or the treasury branch. 2. Clothing, equipments, arms. 3. Provisions, meat, bread, grain, liquors, fuel. 4. Forage, hay, oats, straw, corn. 5. Hospitals and magazines. 6. Carriages and horses for stores and artillery.