highest places falling, as if by gravitation, into the hands of West Pointers. An influence there was in the little academy on the Hudson which somehow brought to pass a superior warlike efficiency. The training at West Point, supplemented as it usually was by campaigning on the plains, although duty was done only by men in squads, and the hardships and perils were scarcely greater than those encountered by the ordinary pioneer and railroad-builder, somehow evoked the field-marshal quality and made it easier to grapple with the tremendous problems with which the army was so suddenly confronted.

A certain pathos attaches to the story of some of those civilian soldiers. In my youthful days, I had often seen N.P. Banks, who had risen from the humblest beginning into much political importance. No large distinction can be claimed for him in any direction, and for elevation of character he was certainly not marked; but he was a man of respectable ability and he climbed creditably from factory-boy to mechanic and thence (through no noisome paths) to Congress, to the post of Governor, and to the Speakership at Washington.

He had military ambition and with the beginning of the war went at once into the army, unfortunately for him, as major-general and commander of a department. Could he have gone in as captain or colonel, his fortune would probably have been different. But, sent to command in the Shenandoah Valley, it was his fate to meet at the outset the most formidable of adversaries, Stonewall Jackson. He was sorely hoodwinked and humiliated, but so were several of his successors. At Cedar Mountain, understanding that his orders were peremptory, he threw his corps upon double their numbers and fought with all the bravery in the world though with defective tactics. Another corps should have been at hand, but it failed to arrive. There was a moment when Banks, weak though he was, was near to victory, but he failed in the end in an impossible task and was made scapegoat for the blunders of others. He was sent to supersede Butler in Louisiana with a force quite inadequate for the duty expected. It was here that I came into contact with him. Interested friends had laid my case before him, as one who might serve well in a higher position than that of a private, and he good-naturedly sent word to me to report to him at a certain hour in the rotunda of the St. Charles Hôtel at New Orleans. The city was in the firm grasp of the Union, as our transport had sailed up the evening before. The ships of Farragut, their decks crowded with blue jackets held under their broad-sides a dense and sullen multitude. A heavy salute reverberated from the river as the new commander took his place, but conditions were precarious.

As I walked up the street in my soldier's dress, a handsome Southern girl almost ran me off the sidewalk with a look in her face which, but for fear of the calaboose, might have been backed up by words and acts of insult, while the faces of the men were full of hate. I stood at last in the rotunda of the St. Charles Hôtel and presently the commander-in-chief, threading his way through a throng of officers, was at my side. I was much dishevelled and still ill after a stormy passage in a crowded ship, but the General was very courteous to the private. He had heard of my enlistment and indicated that he would be glad to utilise me, as he desired to utilise every man, for the best welfare of the service. What did I desire? I told him I had no thought but to do my duty as well as I could wherever I might be put. He discussed the situation reasonably, then offered me a clerkship at headquarters, where I might escape the chief perils of the campaign and where perhaps my education would serve the public. For a moment I hesitated and he passed on, leaving me to decide. My friends felt that I had not the physical strength for work in the field; should I accept the snug place back of the firing-line or risk it at the front? By the next day, I had fully determined to stick to my regiment. I sought the General again at headquarters. Colonel Irwin of his staff at the moment was arranging around his shoulders the yellow sash of the major-general for the formal ceremony of taking command, which was close at hand. But the General had a kindly recognition of the private, assented to my decision, and gave me a pass to the regiment, which had already been hurried onward to the front. I laid my knapsack down by the side of that of my young brother in the camp, which was then at the front.

Banks was a kindly man who meant and did the best he could for the humblest soldier in his army. His further military career I can only briefly sketch. He planned two fierce and calamitous assaults upon Port Hudson; errors no doubt, but Grant and Lee at the moment were making just such errors. The Red River campaign was a disastrous failure, but Banks had every handicap which a general could suffer: an insufficient force, a demand from the Administration that he should attend to a civil reordering when only fighting was in place, subordinates insolent and disobedient. And finally nature herself took arms against him, for the Red River fell when, by all precedents, it should have risen. It was an enterprise which his judgment utterly disapproved, the difficulties of which he faced with good resolution. It ended his career, for though once at a later time he went to Congress, he ever afterwards stood a discredited figure, dying, as I have heard, poor and broken-hearted in obscurity. His State has tried to render him a late justice by setting him up in bronze on Beacon Hill. It was done through opposition and the statue is sneered at more often than admired. He was an able man I believe and meant well, and I for one find it pathetic that the lines of my old commander did not fall more pleasantly.

Butler, on the other hand, I do not regard as a pathetic figure. On the night of my arrival in New Orleans, strolling about the strange city, I found myself at headquarters, and a Massachusetts boy standing sentry on the porch in a spirit of comradeship invited me up. As I ascended the steps Butler, who had been standing at the door, closed it with a crash and retired within. Through a crevice in the blinds he was plain to be seen seated at his desk in profound thought, his bull-dog face in repose, his rude forcefulness very manifest. His rule at New Orleans had come to an end and no doubt he was pondering it and dreaming of what the future had in store for him. His burly frame was relaxed, his bluff unshaken countenance with the queer sinister cast of the eyes fully lighted up by the lamp on his table. I studied him at leisure, his marvellous energy for a moment in repose. In those days his name was much in the mouths of men, and whatever may be said in his disfavour, it cannot be denied after fifty years that his rule of New Orleans was a masterpiece of resolution, a riding rough-shod over a great disaffected city which marked him as full of intrepidity and executive force. In the field he was a worse failure than ever Banks had been. In my idea he deserves in 1864 the characterisation by Charles Francis Adams. He was the Grouchy who made futile Grant's advance upon Richmond and he blundered at Fort Fisher, but he was a pachyderm of the toughest—too thick-skinned to be troubled by the scratches of criticism, always floundering to the front with unquenched energy, sometimes a power for good and sometimes for evil. It is hard to strike the balance and say whether for the most part he helped or hindered, but our past would lack a strong element of picturesqueness if old Ben Butler were eliminated.

There were pathetic figures among the West Pointers as well as among the civilian generals. At St. Louis, in the seventies, I used to see sometimes an unobtrusive man in citizen's dress, marked by no trait which distinguished him from the ordinary, a man serious in his bearing, who one might easily think had undergone some crushing blow. This was Major-General John