520 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, BY THE COMTE DE PARIS. 



organized by England for tbe Crimean war. Tlie Navy may indeed have picked np a handful of 

 sailors from the coasts of France or England, or it uniy Lave received a few of the deserters which 

 every European ship drops into the ports of the New World. Doubtless, also, some English 

 soldiers from the garrisons of Canada may have crossed the frontier, allured not only by the 

 bounties and high pay, but also by the hope that their military experience would secure them 

 positions among such raw troops. It was easy to recognize under the Federal uniform the old 

 English soldier by his unexceptionable bearing, his polished arms, and the precision of his movements. 

 If not disqualified by drunkenness, he soon became drill-sergeant or sergeant-major; if able to 

 read and write, tlie epaulet was within his easy reach. These, however, were only isolated iu.stances. 

 It is true that recruiting-agents, hoping to make a profit on the bounties, went to Canada and 

 Ireland to decoy recruits iu spite of the Federal Government, and that they engaged emigrants to 

 cjme over in the name of fictitious industrial associations, expecting to entice them into the service 

 after they had landed, partly of their own iVec will, partly by force; but the measures taken iu 

 New York and elsewhere to protect these emigrants against the impositions of whichthey were 

 formerly the victims enabled them to free themselves as soon as the fraud was divscovered. This 

 was the case with niost of them ; and although the recruiters were always on the watch to entrap 

 the most destitute among those whom want had driven from Europe to the American shores, they 

 were less successful with these new-comers than with those who had been for some time settled in 

 the United States. 



"We may therefore sum up all these details by affirming that, from the native-born American 

 down to the latest-landed European, the proportion of volunteers turuished to the Federal govern- 

 ment by the dili'ereut classes of the community was in a direct ratio to the interest that each took 

 in the affairs of the republic, and that the longer the emigrant had lived upon its soil the more 

 largely did he contribute towards its defense.'" 



It is probable that the estimate in the foregoing passage as to the number of men available for 

 military service at the outbreak of the rebellion iu ISGl is underestimated. By reference to page 

 66 of the present volume, it will be seen that the computed number was about half a million iu excess 

 of the Comte's figures. 



The curious differeuce in mean stature iu natives of closely-adjoining States, for which a satis- 

 factory reason is yet to be discovered, has not escaped this writer's observation. He says : 



" It is by the average age of the soldiers that national armies are most readily distinguished from 

 mercenary troops. An army of mercenaries is made up of men who make a trade of warfare, serv- 

 ing for a livelihood and enlisting from motives of interest; the larger their number the higher the 

 average of age. A national army, on the contrary, is recruited in equal proportions among all the 

 youth of the country, as well from voluntary as from forced service. Now, the average age of the vol- 

 unteers who enlisted in America before any conscription had taken place was between twenty-four 

 and twenty-five years, or the same as that of our own soldiers before it was raised above this figure 

 by the exoneration law and the multiplicity of substitutes. The larger or smaller proportion of 

 Europeans, or at least of men recently from Europe, iu the contingents of the several States, was 

 made manifest in the military statistics by a remark we raaj' be allowed to quote, as throwing a 

 curious light upon the movements of the populations that elbow one another for a long time in 

 America befon; th<'y become finally mingled. Nothing, in fact, appears more strange, at first sight, 

 than the comparison of the average statures in the contingents of the several States, as shown by 

 the tables published at the end of the war, at a time when the conscription necessitated a scrupu- 

 lous examination of all the men enrolled. Neither climate nor latitude can explain why that 

 average varied so strangely from one State to another, in the Middle as well as in the Northern 

 and Western States ; or why Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky, for instance, furnished the 

 highest average, while, after the State of New York, those of the far West, such as Miunesota and 

 Michigan, sent the smallest men to the Army. This last result is all the more striking, becau.se iu 

 those new States, where the human race seems to develop with greater freedom, there exists a 

 truly athletic population of lumbermen, living from generation to generation in the virgin forest, 

 who, when formed into com[)anies and at times into regiments, presented a line of perfect grena- 

 diers that struck the ollicers of the F.ritish guards with admiration. The reason is that alongside 



' pi>. 180-183. 



