The patriotic zeal
of the men of the company as well as their self-respect made them
easily amenable to military rule so far as it tended to fit them
better to do the noble work they had volunteered for, and on which
their hearts were as fully set as the hearts of their colonels or
generals. In the regular army, officers and men belonged to
different castes, and a practically impassable barrier was between
them. Most of the men who had enlisted in the long years of domestic
peace were, for one cause or another, outcasts, to whom life had
been a failure and who followed the recruiting sergeant as a last
desperate resource when every other door to a livelihood was shut.
[Footnote: Since inducements to enlist have been increased by
offering the chance to win a commission, I believe the quality of
the rank and file of the regulars has been much improved, and as a
natural consequence the officers have found it easy to enforce
discipline by less arbitrary methods.] The war made some change in
this, but the habits and methods of the officers had been formed
before that time and under the old surroundings. The rule was
arbitrary, despotic, often tyrannical, and it was notorious that the
official bearing and the language used toward the regular soldiers
was out of the question in a volunteer organization.
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