During this week McClellan was invited to take the command of the troops to be raised in Pennsylvania, his native State. Some things beside his natural attachment to Pennsylvania made the proposal an attractive one to him. It was already evident that the army which might be organized near Washington would be peculiarly in the public eye, and would give to its leading officers greater opportunities of prompt recognition and promotion than would be likely to occur in the West. The close association with the government would also be a source of power if he were successful, and the way to a chief command would be more open there than elsewhere. McClellan told me frankly that if the offer had come before he had assumed the Ohio command, he would have accepted it; but he promptly decided that he was honorably bound to serve under the commission he had already received and which, like my own, was dated April 23. My own first assignment to a military command was during the same week, on the completion of our estimates, when I was for a few days put in charge of Camp Jackson, the depot of recruits which Governor Dennison had established in the northern suburb of Columbus and had named in honor of the first squelcher of secessionism. McClellan soon determined, however, that a separate camp of instruction should be formed for the troops mustered into the United States service, and should be so placed as to be free from the temptations and inconveniences of too close neighborhood to a large city, whilst it should also be reasonably well placed for speedy defence of the southern frontier of the State. Other camps could be under state control and used only for the organization of regiments which could afterward be sent to the camp of instruction or elsewhere. Railway lines and connections indicated some point in the Little Miami valley as the proper place for such a camp; and Mr. Woodward, the chief engineer of the Little Miami Railroad, being taken into consultation, suggested a spot on the line of that railway about thirteen miles from Cincinnati, where a considerable bend of the Little Miami River encloses wide and level fields, backed on the west by gently rising hills. I was invited to accompany the general in making the inspection of the site, and I think we were accompanied by Captain Rosecrans, an officer who had resigned from the regular army to seek a career as civil engineer, and had lately been in charge of some coal mines in the Kanawha valley. Mr. Woodward was also of the party, and furnished a special train to enable us to stop at as many eligible points as it might be thought desirable to examine. There was no doubt that the point suggested was best adapted for our work, and although the owners of the land made rather hard terms, McClellan was authorized to close a contract for the use of the military camp, which, in honor of the governor, he named Camp Dennison.