Meanwhile McDowell's thirty-six thousand had marched past the President with bands playing and colors flying amid a scene of great enthusiasm. The press campaign was at its height; so was the speechifying; and ninety-nine people out of every hundred thought Beauregard's twenty-two thousand at Bull Run would be defeated in a way that would be sure to make the South give in. McDowell had between two and three thousand regulars: viz., seven troops of cavalry, nine batteries of artillery, eight companies of infantry, and a little battalion of marines. Then there was the immense paper army voted on the Glorious Fourth. And here, for the general public to admire, was a collection of armed and uniformed men that members of Congress and writers in the press united in calling one of the best armies the world had ever seen. Moreover, the publicity campaign was kept up unflaggingly till the very clash of arms began. Reporters marched along and sent off reams of copy. Congressmen, and even ladies, graced the occasion in every way they could. "The various regiments were brilliantly uniformed according to the æsthetic taste of peace," wrote General Fry, then an officer on McDowell's staff, and "during the nineteenth and twentieth the bivouacs at Centreville, almost within cannon range of the enemy, were thronged with visitors, official and unofficial, who came in carriages from Washington, were under no military restraint, and passed to and fro among the troops as they pleased, giving the scene the appearance of a monster military picnic." Had McDowell been able to attack on either of these two days he must have won. But previous Governments had never given the army the means of making proper surveys; so here, within a day's march of the Federal capital, the maps were worthless for military use. Information had to be gleaned by reconnaissance; and reconnaissance takes time, especially without trustworthy guides, sufficient cavalry, and a proper staff. Moreover, the army was all parts and no whole, through no fault of McDowell's or of his military chiefs. The three-month volunteers, whose term of service was nearly over, had not learned their drill as individuals before being herded into companies, battalions, and brigades, of course becoming more and more inefficient as the units grew more and more complex. Of the still more essential discipline they naturally knew still less. There was no lack of courage; for these were the same breed of men as those with whom Washington had won immortal fame, the same as those with whom both Grant and Lee were yet to win it. But, as Napoleon used to say, mere men are not the same as soldiers. Nor are armed mobs the same as armies.