The recruiting of a majority was
naturally made the condition of allowing the company organization to
be preserved, and a similar rule applied to the regiment. The
growing discipline was relaxed or lost in the solicitations, the
electioneering, the speech-making, and the other common arts of
persuasion. After a majority had re-enlisted and an organization was
secure, it would have been better to have discharged the remaining
three months' men and to have sent them home at once; but authority
for this could not be got, for the civil officers could not see, and
did not know what a nuisance these men were. Dissatisfied with
themselves for not going with their comrades, they became sulky,
disobedient, complaining, trying to make the others as unhappy as
themselves by arguing that faith was not kept with them, and doing
all the mischief it was possible to do.
In spite of all these discouragements, however, the daily drills and
instruction went on with some approach to regularity, and our raw
volunteers began to look more like soldiers. Captain Gordon Granger
of the regular army came to muster the re-enlisted regiments into
the three years' service, and as he stood at the right of the Fourth
Ohio, looking down the line of a thousand stalwart men, all in their
Garibaldi shirts (for we had not yet received our uniforms), he
turned to me and exclaimed: "My God! that such men should be food
for powder!" It certainly was a display of manliness and
intelligence such as had hardly ever been seen in the ranks of an
army.
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