While many volunteer troops were hastened to the defense of Washington, large numbers were gathered in camps throughout the North for instruction, organization, and equipment. When Lincoln's first call for troops was made I was at Springfield, Ohio, enjoying a fairly lucrative law practice as things then went, but with competition acutely sharp for future great success. I had, in November, 1856, come from the common labor of a farm to a small city, to there complete a course of law reading, commenced years before and prosecuted at irregular intervals. After my removal to Springfield I finished a preparatory course, and January 12, 1858, when not yet twenty-two years of age, I was admitted to practice law by the Supreme Court of Ohio, and settled in Springfield, where I had the good fortune to enjoy a satisfactory share of the clientage. I had from youth a desire to learn as much as possible of war and military campaigns, but, save a little volunteer militia training of a poor kind, obtained as a member of a uniformed military company, and a little duty on a militia general's staff, I had no education or preparation for the responsible duties of a soldier-- certainly none for the important duties of an officer of any considerable command. Thus situated and unprepared, on the first call for volunteers I enlisted as a private soldier in a Springfield company, and went with it to Camp Jackson, now Goodale Park, Columbus, Ohio.( 1) The first volunteers were allowed to elect their own company and field officers. I was elected Major of the 3d Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and commissioned, April 27, 1861, by Governor William Dennison. A few days subsequently, my regiment was sent to Camp Dennison, near Cincinnati, to begin its work of preparation for the field. Here I saw and came to know in some sense Major-General George B. McClellan, also Wm. S. Rosecrans, Jacob D. Cox, Gordon Granger, and others who afterward became Major-Generals. I also met many others, whom in the campaigns and battles of the succeeding four years I knew and appreciated as accomplished officers. But many I met there fell by the way, not alone by the accidents of battle but because of unfitness for command or general inefficiency.