242
��The JVorthern Volunteers.
��them, the manner of their return at the end of the war proved their love of peace and their inbred respect for law and order. The Eno-lish histo- rian praises Cromwell's array of 50,000 veterans, then the most for- midable in the world, for disbanding and being absorbed into the com- munity without unlawful conduct or tumult. At the end of our war a million soldiers disbanded without tumult, and subsided among the peo- ple without a sign of disorder. Fa- miliar with bloodshed, they were not hardened by it. Accustomed to the freedom of camps, and living in an enemy's country, they were not un- settled by it. As it was with Crom- well's veterans, they were, for the most part, better citizens for their military training.
The wonder of the sudden disso- lution of this host of veterans was deeply impressed upon those who witnessed the grand review of the armies in Washington on the eve of disbanding them. Two hundred thousand bronzed and hardy soldiers marched by the j)resident in front of the White House during two long summer days. They passed swiftly, with the swinging step and assui'ed touch — shoulder to shoulder — acquir- ed by long practice and many marches. Their scars, their fearless bearing, and their tattered flags told the story of their battles. Among them rode many a commander whose name is historic — Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Meade, and the rest. It seemed as though these famous corps, divisions, brigades, and regiments were too solidly united by comradeship, too proud of their history, too well accus- tomed to act together, too conscious
��of their power, to be dissolved and thenceforward exist only in memory. Yet that was the last review, and in one short month that vast host had stacked its arms and furled its ban- ners and had dispersed forever. To many a soldier it was like breaking up his home.
THE OFFICERS.
In raising vast levies of troops and organizing them into regiments, it was unavoidable that many men without military instruction, and sometimes men of bad antecedents, should be appointed officers ; and it sometimes happened where officers were elected by the men, that the man who could best practise the arts which prevail in political elections got the commis- sion ; and, again, the exigencies of recruiting sometimes required that the man who got the most recruits to enroll themselves was made the cap- tain or colonel. Such a man has been likened by the Comte de Paris, in his history of our war, to the an- cient proprietary colonel, who held his commission by virtue of his pro prietorship in the men, or the com- mander of the independent company of cavalry of the middle ages, who commanded by virtue of his contract for the services of his men. But there were not many bad officers from this source, and the governors of states usually appointed men whose position and character in civil life warranted the distinction.
Gen. de Chanal, an officer of the French army who was with our army, says that with us " the social hie- rarchy was transported to the army and became the military hierarchy," and, with deep insight into the spirit
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