CHAP. XXXIX.] RAISING TROOPS. 345 



in civil affairs, raised to the Presidentship.&quot; I asked 

 whether, in a country where nearly all are industri 

 ously employed, it will be possible to find recruits for 

 foreign service. Nothing, they reply, is more easy. 

 &quot; Our broad Indian frontier has nurtured a daring 

 and restless population, which loves excitement and 

 adventure, and in the Southern States there are num 

 bers of whites to whom military service would be a 

 boon, because slavery has degraded labour.&quot; A 

 week later I received a letter from a correspon 

 dent in the South, who said, &quot; Such is the mili 

 tary fever in Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, and 

 Mississippi, that these States alone would furnish 

 50,000 men, if required; and in many districts 

 we are in fear of such an enlistment of the white 

 population, that there will be too few left at home 

 to serve as a police for the negroes. Married men 

 are going as well as bachelors, lawyers, medical men, 

 and schoolmasters, many of whom have no taste 

 whatever for fighting or foreign service, but they 

 know that to have served a year in a campaign, to 

 have been in a battle, or to have been wounded, 

 would advance them more in an election, or even in 

 their several professions, than any amount of study 

 or acquired knowledge.&quot; 



The Sunday following we heard a sermon by the 

 Rev. Orville Dewey, in which this spirit of territorial 

 aggrandisement, this passion for war, these false no 

 tions of national honour and glory, were characterised 

 as unchristian and indicating a low standard of pri 

 vate as well as public morality. I remarked to a 

 New England acquaintance, who was one of the large 



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