" As the total number of general
officers was limited by law, it followed, of course, that promotion
had to be withheld from many who had won it by service in the field.
This evil, however, was not peculiar to the class of appointments
from civil life. The faults in the first appointments were such as
were almost necessarily connected with the sudden creation of a vast
army. The failure to provide for a thorough test and sifting of the
material was a governmental error. It was palliated by the necessity
of conciliating influential men, and of avoiding antagonisms when
the fate of the nation trembled in the balance; but this was a
political motive, and the evil was probably endured in spite of its
well-known tendency to weaken the military service.
A few months' campaigning in the field got us rid of most of the
"town-meeting style" of conducting military affairs in the army
itself, though nothing could cure the practice on the part of
unscrupulous men of seeking reputation with the general public by
dishonest means. The newspapers were used to give fictitious credit
to some and to injure others. If the regular correspondents of the
press had been excluded from the camps, there would no doubt have
been surreptitious correspondence which would have found its way
into print through private and roundabout channels.
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