The officers of the regular army were rigid disciplinarians. Those who had been in the service had been accustomed to different and coarser material than that which formed the volunteer army. Their men had never had a voice in choosing their officers, whose responsibility was in the direction of the War Department, and not at all in the direction of the force they commanded. It had been their province to command, as it had been that of their men to obey, not only on the battle-field, but in all the minutiæ of the camp and the garrison. One of these soldiers could be punished for neglecting to button his coat on parade, or to clean the spot of rust from the barrel of his musket; for being two inches short of the regulation step, or for a degree of variation in the angle of his feet in the line. Men who had left the plough in the furrow on the farm which they had paid for and owned, to fight the battles of the republic, were at least impatient under such restraints. Efficient regular officers, however popular they became on the field of battle, were in perhaps a majority of instances exceedingly obnoxious to the troops in camps of organization and discipline. With the democratic ideas of the soldiers, with their republican notions of equality, it was hardly possible that it should be otherwise; for the transition of the citizen from his social rank in the city and the village to the ranks of the army was a violent and radical change to him. Doubtless, in many cases, these West Point officers were martinets, and, "armed with a little brief authority," were unnecessarily arbitrary and severe; but it was not these alone who were stigmatized as "tyrants" and "oppressors." Without discipline, even down to the minute details of which a civilian can have no adequate conception or appreciation, an army is inefficient, and in a measure useless. The regular officers justified themselves before the enemy, if they did not sooner, not alone in the merit of their fighting capacity, but in those obnoxious details of discipline. Grant was a regular army officer, a strict but prudent disciplinarian. Several regiments desired to elect him as their colonel, which amply vouches for his popularity before he had come into direct and intimate contact with the volunteer force. There was magic in the idea of having a commander who had not only received a regular military education, but who had won a reputation on the field of battle. It was a guaranty of the future welfare of the regiment. To maintain this respect, and keep up this popularity during the actual enforcement of arbitrary and disagreeable military regulations, was a vastly greater achievement.