And it was so all through 1861. We had five other battles in that year, all of which we lost in the same way and for the same cause, except one. Drainesville--have you ever heard of it? That was all we had to show for the whole year’s effort--a tiny battle having no influence on cutting the war shorter. And in that time we had killed and wounded three thousand three hundred seventy-one men and spent four hundred nineteen million dollars--all to no purpose--sheer waste. In fact worse than waste, because the setbacks had paralyzed our efforts. Then came the mismanagement of the second and part of the third year of the war. While the Union was organizing as a loose Confederacy, the Confederacy was organizing as a close Union. The southern government keenly abandoned states’ rights for their army shortly after they had begun to fight for states’ rights as a national policy. The northern government inanely took up states’ rights for their army immediately after they had begun to fight against states’ rights as a national possibility. Both were inconsistent, but the South was inconsistent wisely. It did away with voluntary enlistments and the power of independent states to appoint officers and to offer whole units--and vested the control in its President. It made a unified army. It then enacted the first proper draft law in any English-speaking country--a thing which was afterwards the greatest single stroke of efficiency for America in the World War. On the other hand, the Union persisted in lopsided volunteering and gave away to the governors absolute authority to create organizations and appoint the officers over them. And Mr. Lincoln had to receive these irregular lots and do the best he could with them. He was powerless at the head of this great organization to have control over the selection of his employees. And the way they were selected didn’t help much either. Political favorites, farmers, clerks, ward bosses and men about town, were given command of regiments and battalions, when they knew nothing about the technique, tactics or art of their undertaking--nothing about the real business of their jobs. Professional qualifications had little to do with their selection. Influence, popularity, deference, obligation and even pity put them in their positions. Why, one officer was elected a captain of a company because he had the most children and needed the money. Others were made colonels or majors for just as sensible reasons, while three hundred and eight trained officers were overlooked and kept in small positions throughout the war. Would we put plumbers or carpenters over our sick in the hospital? We did worse. We put them over well men, fine bodies, whose lives depended upon knowledge and experience against the awful things they had to face. For the camp and bivouac are even more deadly than the battlefield under untrained leaders. In more ways than one our hurried management caused the lengthening of the horror into four long