In What I Shall Say As To That Matter
Of Peculation, I Trust That I May Be Believed To Have Spoken Without
Personal Ill Feeling Or Individual Malice.
While I was traveling in the States of New England and in the
Northwest, I came across various camps at which young regiments were
being drilled and new regiments were being formed.
These lay in our
way as we made our journeys, and, therefore, we visited them; but
they were not objects of any very great interest. The men had not
acquired even any pretense of soldier-like bearing. The officers
for the most part had only just been selected, having hardly as yet
left their civil occupations, and anything like criticism was
disarmed by the very nature of the movement which had called the men
together. I then thought, as I still think, that the men themselves
were actuated by proper motives, and often by very high motives, in
joining the regiments. No doubt they looked to the pay offered. It
is not often that men are able to devote themselves to patriotism
without any reference to their personal circumstances. A man has
got before him the necessity of earning his bread, and very
frequently the necessity of earning the bread of others besides
himself. This comes before him not only as his first duty, but as
the very law of his existence. His wages are his life, and when he
proposes to himself to serve his country, that subject of payment
comes uppermost as it does when he proposes to serve any other
master.
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