FOR civil affairs Americans were more or less trained; but they had ignored war, and had shown no capacity in their treatment of military matters. Their little army was not well organized or equipped; its civil administration was more imperfect than its military, and its military condition could hardly have been worse. The ten old regiments, with half-filled ranks, were scattered over an enormous country on garrison service, from which they could not be safely withdrawn; they had no experience, and no organization for a campaign, while thirteen new regiments not yet raised were expected to conquer Canada. If the army in rank and file was insufficient, its commanding officers supplied none of its wants. The senior major-general appointed by President Madison in February, 1812, was Henry Dearborn, who had retired in 1809 from President Jefferson’s Cabinet into the Custom-House of Boston. Born in 1751, Dearborn at the time of his nomination as major-general was in his sixty-second year, and had never held a higher grade in the army than that of deputy quartermaster-general in 1781, and colonel of a New Hampshire regiment after active service in the Revolutionary War had ended. The other major-general appointed at the same time was Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, who received command of the Southern Department. Pinckney was a year older than Dearborn; his military service was chiefly confined to the guerilla campaigns of Marion and Sumter, and to staff duty as aide to General Gates in the Southern campaign of 1780; he had been minister in England and Envoy Extraordinary to Spain, where he negotiated the excellent treaty known by his name; he had been also a Federalist member of Congress in the stormy sessions from 1797 to 1801,--but none of these services, distinguished as they were, seemed to explain his appointment as major-general. Macon, whose opinions commonly reflected those of the Southern people, was astonished at the choice. “The nomination of Thomas Pinckney for major-general,” he wrote,[227] “is cause of grief to all men who wish proper men appointed; not that he is a Federal or that he is not a gentleman, but because he is thought not to possess the talents necessary to his station. I imagine his nomination must have been produced through the means of P. Hamilton, who is about as fit for his place as the Indian Prophet would be for Emperor of Europe. I never was more at a loss to account for any proceeding than the nomination of Pinckney to be major-general.” Even the private report that Pinckney had become a Republican did not reconcile Macon, whose belief that the “fighting secretaries” would not do for real war became stronger than ever, although he admitted that some of the military appointments were supposed to be tolerably good.