The general confusion which reigned at Washington at this time had to be seen to be understood.  No description can convey my initial impression of it.  The first time I saw General Scott, then Commander-in-Chief, he was being helped by two men across the pavement from his office into his carriage.  He was an old, decrepit man, paralyzed not only in body, but in mind; and it was upon this noble relic of the past that the organization of the forces of the Republic depended.  His chief commissary, General Taylor, was in some degree a counterpart of Scott.  It was our business to arrange with these, and others scarcely less fit, for the opening of communications and for the transportation of men and supplies.  They were seemingly one and all martinets who had passed the age of usefulness.  Days would elapse before a decision could be obtained upon matters which required prompt action.  There was scarcely a young active officer at the head of any important department—­at least I cannot recall one.  Long years of peace had fossilized the service.

The same cause had produced like results, I understood, in the Navy Department, but I was not brought in personal contact with it.  The navy was not important at the beginning; it was the army that counted.  Nothing but defeat was to be looked for until the heads of the various departments were changed, and this could not be done in a day.  The impatience of the country at the apparent delay in producing an effective weapon for the great task thrown upon the Government was no doubt natural, but the wonder to me is that order was so soon evolved from the chaos which prevailed in every branch of the service.

As far as our operations were concerned we had one great advantage.  Secretary Cameron authorized Mr. Scott (he had been made a Colonel) to do what he thought necessary without waiting for the slow movements of the officials under the Secretary of War.  Of this authority unsparing use was made, and the important part played by the railway and telegraph department of the Government from the very beginning of the war is to be attributed to the fact that we had the cordial support of Secretary Cameron.  He was then in the possession of all his faculties and grasped the elements of the problem far better than his generals and heads of departments.  Popular clamor compelled Lincoln to change him at last, but those who were behind the scenes well knew that if other departments had been as well managed as was the War Department under Cameron, all things considered, much of disaster would have been avoided.

Lochiel, as Cameron liked to be called, was a man of sentiment.  In his ninetieth year he visited us in Scotland and, passing through one of our glens, sitting on the front seat of our four-in-hand coach, he reverently took off his hat and bareheaded rode through the glen, overcome by its grandeur.  The conversation turned once upon the efforts which candidates for office must themselves put forth and the fallacy that office seeks the man, except in very rare emergencies.  Apropos of this Lochiel told this story about Lincoln’s second term: