It would have been well if the period of apprenticeship could have been prolonged; but events would not wait.
All recognized the necessity, and thankful as we should have been for a longer preparation and more thorough instruction, we were eager to be ordered away.
McClellan had been made a major-general in the regular army, and a department had been placed under his command which included the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, to which was added a little later West Virginia north of the Great Kanawha.

[Footnote: McClellan's Report and Campaigns (New York, 1864), p.8.

McClellan's Own Story, p.44.Official Records, vol.ii.p.

633.] Rosecrans was also appointed a brigadier-general in the regulars, and there was much debate at the time whether the Administration had intended this.

Many insisted that he was nominated for the volunteer service, and that the regular appointment was a clerical mistake in the bureaus at Washington.