The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
studied in the United States; and this is an encouragement to afford
further illustrations of the case, when new material is at command.
I am thinking most of the volunteer forces at this moment, for the
obvious reason that their health is in greater danger than that of the
professional soldier. The regular troops live under a system which is
always at work to feed, clothe, lodge, and entertain them: whereas
the volunteers are quitting one mode of life for another, all the
circumstances of which had to be created at the shortest notice. To them
their first campaign must be very like what it was to British soldiers
who had never seen war to be sent to Turkey first, and then to the
Crimea, to live a new kind of life, and meet discomforts and dangers
which they had never dreamed of. I shall therefore select my details
with a view to the volunteers and their friends in the first place.
The enthusiasm which started the volunteers of every Northern State on
their new path of duty could hardly exceed that by which the British
troops were escorted from their barrack-gates to the margin of the sea.
The war was universally approved (except by a clique of peace-men); and
there was a universal confidence that the troops would do their duty
well, though not one man in a thousand of them had ever seen war. As
they marched down to their ships, in the best mood, and with every
appearance of health and spirit, nobody formed any conception of what
would happen. Parliament had fulfilled the wishes of the people
by voting liberal sums for the due support of the troops; the
Administration desired and ordered that everything should be done for
the soldier's welfare; and as far as orders and arrangements went, the
scheme was thoroughly well intended and generous. Who could anticipate,
that, while the enemy never once gained a battle or obtained an
advantage over British or French, two-thirds of that fine stout British
force would perish in a few months? Of the twenty-five thousand who went
out, eighteen thousand were dead in a year; and the enemy was answerable
for a very small proportion of those deaths. Before me lie the returns
of six months of those twelve, showing the fate of the troops for that
time; and it furnishes the key to the whole story.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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