Buell was not exactly a valedictorian, and was not in the Engineer Corps, but nevertheless he was one to whom all this I have said and exampled is applicable. He was not made impracticable, but too methodical by his pupilage. Not too much learning, but too much routine ruined him. He was not too much of a book-worm, but too much of a red tapist. His Alma Mater was not West Point, but that more pitiless school, the adjutant general's office. Thirteen years' constant service in that department of the army made him too systematic--smothered the fire in his heart, the impulsive in his nature, and, like Thomas, he taught himself "not to feel." It rendered him cool in danger, while not depriving him of his readiness in emergency, but it also unfortunately made him so systematic that it injured the originality of his conceptions. The adjutant general's office made him too much of a regular, so that when he came to command a great volunteer force he looked for and strove in vain to attain the perfectness in appointment, organization, drill, and all that routine duty to which he had been accustomed in the old army. Buell was a thoroughly educated soldier, as a strategist and tactician the equal of Grant; but he was too much of an organizer, and this, with a volunteer army to command, really detracted from his merit. Good organizers of large armies seldom succeed in handling them to signal advantage. Buell was too good an organizer. This mere routine duty absorbed too much of his mind; his mind became too much accustomed to dwell upon that specialty, and he gave it too much importance and consideration. So thoroughly had Buell's mind become imbued with the importance of giving to volunteer armies the precise organization of the regulars, that in taking leave of the army which he had formed from "Sherman's mob," he congratulated the soldiers who had saved us Shiloh, first, as more important in his eye than their victories, on their conversion "from raw levies into a powerful army, honored by common consent for its discipline and efficient organization, and for its _esprit de corps_."