It had been the peculiar blessing of our country that a great standing army was unnecessary, and it would be foolish to regret that our little army could not have the experience with great bodies of troops and the advantages of theoretical instruction which are part of the life of officers in the immense establishments of Continental Europe.

My only purpose is to make an approximately true balance sheet of the actual advantages of the two parts of our National army in 1861.
Whilst on the subject, however, I will go a little further and say that prior to our Civil War, the history of European conflicts proves that there also the theoretic preparation of military men had not, up to that time, saved them from the necessity of learning both generalship and army administration in the terrible school of experience, during their first year in the field when a new war broke out after a long interval of peace.
The first volume of Kinglake's "Crimean War" appeared in 1863, and I immediately and eagerly devoured it for the purpose of learning the lesson it could teach.

It was one of the memorable sensations of a lifetime, to find that the regular armies of England, of France, and of Russia had had to learn their lesson anew when they faced each other on the shore of the Euxine, and that, whether in matters of transportation, of subsistence, of the hospital, of grand tactics, or of generalship, they had no advantage over our army of volunteers fresh from their peaceful pursuits.

The photographic fidelity to detail on the part of the historian, and his apparent unconsciousness of the sweeping conclusions to be drawn from his pictures, made the lesson all the more telling.

I drew a long breath of relief, and nothing which happened to me in the whole war so encouraged me to hopeful confidence in the outcome of it, as the evidence I saw that our blunders at the beginning had been no greater than those of old standing armies, and that our capacity to learn was at least as quick as theirs.