Washington and other cities were deluged with a bewildered, undisciplined and poorly led and organized lot of fellows. Under little restraint they wandered aimlessly about, often unfed for weeks, quartered in muddy, filthy buildings, with ill-fitting and oftimes insufficient clothing and with little idea of their duties, conduct or responsibilities. The trained men were so few they couldn’t be found, and the government, unlike the able management in the South, made no effort to find them or use their services to the best advantage. Why, when U. S. Grant wrote to Washington offering himself for duty, he wasn’t even replied to. Naturally you can’t blame the rank and file, if there was an unwarranted lot of brawls and disturbances. Idleness and lack of discipline just means that. Public buildings were defaced. Even the Capitol itself suffered damage and abuse from a regiment quartered in its halls and on the very floors of the Senate and House. The farmer colonel and the apothecary major stalked the streets in showy uniforms, drew their pay, and didn’t go near their commands for weeks. Not all of them. There were some very worthy ones, who strove under hindrances of little opportunity, to bring order out of their units. But they were the accidents in our country’s arrangements--or lack of them. In these first few months of grand hubbub, misfit and waste, the country had spent more money than would have supported an army of prevention during the preceding ten years. And what needless hardship and suffering it had brought to more than seventy-five thousand people.