Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 1 - April 1861-November 1863 by Jacob Dolson Cox
page 28 of 598 (04%)
page 28 of 598 (04%)
|
supporting the government by military service come peculiarly home
to us. He was, for the moment, somewhat trammelled by his half-clerical position, but he very soon cut the knot. My own path seemed unmistakably clear. He, more careful for his friend than for himself, urged upon me his doubts whether my physical strength was equal to the strain that would be put upon it. "I," said he, "am big and strong, and if my relations to the church and the college can be broken, I shall have no excuse for not enlisting; but you are slender and will break down." It was true that I looked slender for a man six feet high (though it would hardly be suspected now that it was so), yet I had assured confidence in the elasticity of my constitution; and the result justified me, whilst it also showed how liable to mistake one is in such things. Garfield found that he had a tendency to weakness of the alimentary system which broke him down on every campaign in which he served and led to his retiring from the army much earlier than he had intended. My own health, on the other hand, was strengthened by out-door life and exposure, and I served to the end with growing physical vigor. When Mr. Lincoln issued his first call for troops, the existing laws made it necessary that these should be fully organized and officered by the several States. Then, the treasury was in no condition to bear the burden of war expenditures, and till Congress could assemble, the President was forced to rely on the States to furnish the means necessary for the equipment and transportation of their own troops. This threw upon the governors and legislatures of the loyal States responsibilities of a kind wholly unprecedented. A long period of profound peace had made every military organization seem almost farcical. A few independent military companies formed the merest shadow of an army; the state militia proper was only a |
|