CHAP. XXVIII.] AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865. 



439 



ments, where every man carried his life in his hands, 

 rendered the custom of carrying revolvers or bowie 

 knives almost universal. 



The exigencies of a new country, the absolute want 

 of regularity and order, the necessity of adapting an<l 

 arranging everything to suit circumstances, the con- 

 tinual habit of contrivinor and inventinfj methods of 

 meeting difl&culties of the most varied and complicated 

 character, which were continually arising in the bush, 

 had the natural result of making the American people 

 use the power of reason to the highest possible extent. 

 This devalo23ed their invertive faculties to the utmost, 

 and it has resulted in producing the shrewdest and most 

 self-reliant people in the world. The power of invention 

 of the native Yankee is proverbial. 



Such was the population, such the state of their arms, 

 and such their ideas of weapons when the war broke 

 out, and the regular army was swamped and lost in the 

 vast hordes of volunteers who tnronged to the standards 

 of the two rival powers. It will be interesting to follow 

 the course of this war, and see how their shrewd practical 

 common sense and the absence of prejudice and red 

 tape led them to adopt a system of tactics, somewhat 

 new and peculiar to themselves, but still wonderfully well 

 adapted to their circumstances and to the state of the 

 art of war at the time. 



The training and customs of the people had a great 

 effect upon the results of the war, and the difference in 

 the quality of the troops raised in various portions of 

 the country was soon perceived in a very marked 

 degree. 



The New Englanders were a manufacturing people, 

 and the troops from the North-Eastern States were 

 mainly recruited from the manufacturing classes. The 

 Southerners, on the contrary, were almost all agricul- 

 turists and well accustomed to the use of weapons ; while 

 the North-Western States furnished a hardy class of 

 frontiersmen and farmers to the armies of the Union. 



The Southerners were soldiers of the best quality, but 

 were greatly outnumbered. In the Department of the 



