Amongst those raising companies were young lawyers who had perhaps learned to draw an indictment, but who would not then have been able to draw anything in the military line, unless it were rations, or the enemy's fire. There were schoolmasters whose only qualifications for getting men to the front and keeping them there, were based on experience in teaching young ideas how to shoot. There were farmers, clerks, and fellows just out of college, some graduates and some undergraduates, but with not a tried or known military qualification in the whole squad. I mistake; there was one who recruited a company, and who had been in the Mexican War, but he was afterward found to have forgotten most that he had ever learned, and was soon found also unable, in the matter of legs, to keep up with the procession. And there was another who had had experience in an earlier regiment raised in 1861, but he resigned after his first battle. However, with these miscellaneous qualifications, unaided by experience, the embryo officers worked energetically to enlist the men. The work was largely, but not wholly, of the button-holing order. It was not unattended with exciting incidents. Anxious mothers met the recruiting officers sometimes in tears and sometimes in wrath. One such, I remember, drove him from the premises with a pitchfork. It was the first charge he had met and he retreated. The young man, however, got his recruit. The method of recruiting at that time would not bear strict investigation. It shared in the general and unavoidable slip-shodness and haste which marked the whole work of raising great armies out of an undrilled and unmilitary population, and on short notice. Troops in large numbers were needed and that urgently. Political considerations forbade drafting. They must be raised by volunteering. The inducements were bounties to the men and commissions to the officers. He who could raise a company in the least time was looked upon with the greatest favor and, other things being equal, got the earliest letter in the alphabet of the regiment. The recruiting officer did not know what kind of a man, of what physical or moral fibre, the service required, and had no opportunity to learn. His object was to get his hundred men as quickly as possible; and provided the recruit had limbs, organs, and dimensions, that was enough. The care of the Governor of the State, and usually his knowledge, went also no further. He had the State's quota to fill, and was most concerned to fill it as early and as easily as possible. The average examining surgeon had no more knowledge of the business than the recruiting officer, and was inclined to take the patriotism of the volunteer as conclusive evidence of bodily soundness. The mustering officer mustered in the lump, what the recruiting officer had gathered and the surgeon had passed.