The United States was poorly prepared and equipped for military and naval campaigns when, in June, 1812, Congress declared war on Great Britain. Nothing had been learned from the costly blunders of the Revolution, and the delusion that readiness for war was a menace to democracy had influenced the Government to absurd extremes. The regular army comprised only sixty-seven hundred men, scattered over an enormous country and on garrison service from which they could not be safely withdrawn. They were without traditions and without experience in actual warfare. Winfield Scott, at that time a young officer in the regular army, wrote: The old officers had very generally sunk into either sloth, ignorance, or habits of intemperate drinking.... Many of the appointments were positively bad, and a majority of the remainder indifferent. Party spirit of that day knew no bounds, and was of course blind to policy. Federalists were almost entirely excluded from selection, though great numbers were eager for the field.... Where there was no lack of educated men in the dominant party, the appointments consisted generally of swaggerers, dependents, decayed gentlemen, and others "fit for nothing else," which always turned out utterly unfit for any military purpose whatever. The main reliance was to be on militia and volunteers, an army of the free people rushing to arms in defense of their liberties, as voiced by Jefferson and echoed more than a century later by another spokesman of democracy. There was the stuff for splendid soldiers in these farmers and woodsmen, but in many lamentable instances their regiments were no more than irresponsible armed mobs. Until as recently as the War with Spain, the perilous fallacy persisted that the States should retain control of their several militia forces in time of war and deny final authority to the Federal Government. It was this doctrine which so nearly wrecked the cause of the Revolution. George Washington had learned the lesson through painful experience, but his counsel was wholly disregarded; and, because it serves as a text and an interpretation for much of the humiliating history which we are about to follow, that counsel is here quoted in part. Washington wrote in retrospect: