Most of the men who had enlisted in the long years of domestic peace were, for one cause or another, outcasts, to whom life had been a failure and who followed the recruiting sergeant as a last desperate resource when every other door to a livelihood was shut.
[Footnote: Since inducements to enlist have been increased by offering the chance to win a commission, I believe the quality of the rank and file of the regulars has been much improved, and as a natural consequence the officers have found it easy to enforce discipline by less arbitrary methods.] The war made some change in this, but the habits and methods of the officers had been formed before that time and under the old surroundings.

The rule was arbitrary, despotic, often tyrannical, and it was notorious that the official bearing and the language used toward the regular soldiers was out of the question in a volunteer organization.

Exceptions could be found in both parts of the service, but there could be no doubt as to the custom and the rule.

To know how to command volunteers was explicitly recognized by our leading generals as a quality not found in many regular officers, and worth noting when found.

A volunteer regiment might have a "free and easy" look to the eye of a regular drill sergeant, but in every essential for good conduct and ready manoeuvre on the field of battle, or for heroic efforts in the crisis of a desperate engagement, it could not be excelled if its officers had been reasonably competent and faithful.
There was inevitable loss of time in the organization and instruction of a new army of volunteers; but after the first year in the field, in every quality which tends to give victory in battle to a popular cause, the volunteer regiment was, in my judgment, unquestionably superior.