f service
and in being generally allowed to elect their own regimental
officers. Theoretically they were furnished in fixed
quotas by the different States, according to population.
They resembled the regulars in other respects, especially
in being directly under Federal, not State, authority.

_The Rangers_. Three thousand men with a real or supposed
knowledge of backwoods life served in the war. They
operated in groups and formed a very unequal force--good,
bad, and indifferent. Some were under the Federal authority.
Others belonged to the different States. As a distinct
class they had no appreciable influence on the major
results of the war.

_The Militia_. The vast bulk of the American forces, more
than three-quarters of the grand total by land and sea,
was made up of the militia belonging to the different
States of the Union. These militiamen could not be moved
outside of their respective States without State authority;
and individual consent was also necessary to prolong a
term of enlistment, even if the term should come to an
end in the middle of a battle. Some enlisted for several
months; others for no more than one. Very few had any
military knowledge whatever; and most of the officers
were no better trained than the men. The totals from all
the different States amounted to 456,463. Not half of
these ever got near the front; and not nearly half of
those who did get there ever came into action at all.
Except at New Orleans, where the conditions were quite
abnormal, the militia never really helped to decide the
issue of any battle, except, indeed, against their own
army. 'The militia thereupon broke and fled' recurs with
tiresome frequency in numberless dispatches. Yet the
consequent charges of cowardice are nearly all unjust.
The fellow-countrymen of those sailors who fought the
American frigates so magnificently were no special kind
of cowards. But, as a raw militia, they simply were to
well-trained regulars what children are to men.

_American Non-Combatant Services_. There were more than
fifty thousand deaths reported on the American side; yet
not ten thousand men were killed or mortally wounded in
all the battles put together. The medical department,
like the commissariat and transport, was only organized
at the very last minute, even among the regulars, and
then in a most haphazard way. Among the militia these
indispensable branches of the service were never really
organized at all.

Such disast