So it came about, as Roosevelt has said, that the frontier people of the second generation "had no military training whatever, and though they possessed a skeleton militia organization, they derived no benefit from it, because their officers were worthless, and the men had no idea of practising self-restraint or obeying orders longer than they saw fit." ¹ When the War of 1812 began, these backwoods troops were pitted against British regulars who were powerfully supported by Indian allies. The officers of these untrained American troops were, like Hull, pompous, broken-down, political incapables; while to the men themselves may fairly be applied Amos Kendall's disgusted characterization of a Kentucky muster: "The soldiers are under no more restraint than a herd of swine. Reasoning, remonstrating, threatening, and ridiculing their officers, they show their sense of equality and their total want of subordination." Not until the very last of the war, when under Harrison's direction capable and experienced officers drilled them into real soldiers, did these backwoods stalwarts become an effective fighting force. ¹ Winning of the West, vol. IV. p. 246. There were also shortcomings of another sort. None was more exasperating or costly than the lack of means of transportation. Even in Ohio, the oldest and most settled portion of the Northwest, roads were few and poor; elsewhere there were practically none of any kind. But the regions in which the war was carried on were far too sparsely populated to be able to furnish the supplies, even the foodstuffs, needed by the troops; and materials of every sort had to be transported from the East, by river, lake, and wilderness trail. Up and down the great unbroken stretches between the Ohio and the Lakes moved the floundering supply trains in the vain effort to keep up with the armies, or to reach camps or forts in time to avert starvation or disaster. Pack-horses waded knee-deep in mud; wagons were dragged through mire up to their hubs; even empty vehicles sometimes became so embedded that they had to be abandoned, the drivers being glad to get off with their horses alive. Many times a quartermaster, taking advantage of a frost, would send off a convoy of provisions, only to hear of its being swamped by a thaw before reaching its destination. One of the tragedies of the war was the suffering of the troops while waiting for supplies of clothing, tents, medicines, and food which were stuck in swamps or frozen up in rivers or lakes. Beset with pleurisy, pneumonia, and rheumatism in winter, with fevers in summer, and subject to attack by the Indians at all times, these frontier soldiers led an existence of exceptional hardship. Only the knowledge that they were fighting for their freedom and their homes held them to their task. An interesting sidelight on the conditions under which their work was done is contained in the following extract from a letter written by a volunteer in 1814: