. >> howard sears, hackensack, new jersey. this is primarily directed at john. i just wanted to talk about west point at the time, which is really an engineering school masquerading as military academy. you had hardy writing on tactics, but outside of that, there wasn't much in the art of war going on at west point, and these men that left west point to command the armies of the north and south, no one had ever maneuvered armies of this size. it was really on-the-job training as lincoln had to learn the job of commander in chief. and that's basically what i'd like to comment. >> i think in all fairness to west point, and i'll let craig disagree with me, i think the one thing that everybody agreed that west point did teach is they did teach organization and administration. and so the one thing that a cadet came out of west point was with the ability to administer a group of people. it's true, they really didn't get much tactics, they didn't get much strategy and all, but they did get that. and that wasn't such a bad bit of knowledge and ability to do. >> well, jo