It was just as observable nearly three hundred years ago. But it was then observed with alarm. For the old-time militia was a very different affair from the intelligent, serious-minded, and hard-working body of the present. “Training days” were inseparably associated with rum; and if our troops swore terribly in Flanders, there is reason to suppose they also did in Massachusetts. It is one of the oddest streaks in the early New England character that the most sober and God-fearing citizens, pillars of the church and patterns of righteousness, if stood up in line with matchlocks in their hands, immediately did their best to fulfil the popular conception of an ignorant, brutal, and licentious soldiery.[1]
This inconsistency was largely the result of tradition. When the Puritans left Old England the train-bands there had sunk to a very low state of efficiency. The ancient “Assize at Arms” had fallen completely into decay. The yeomanry were called out hardly once in five years; and even then many paid the required fine rather than attend. Few of the members knew so much as how to load a musket, though it is to be suspected that all knew how to brew a bowl of bishop.
- ↑ This deplorable bit of psychoanalysis was noted in Cambridge so early as 1641, by the Reverend Thomas Shepard: “Take a poor souldier alone, he is as other men; but when they are got into a knot together, now they grow strong against all lawes of God or men.” Sermon on Subjection to Christ, 119.
