ifference between the
officers and men in the Union army, is that officers get more pay for
doing less duty; they become dissipated and fast because they can better
afford it, they drink more, put on style, play cards for money, and
think the world revolves around them, and that they are indispensible
to success, and yet when they die, or are discharged for cause, private
soldiers take their place and become better officers than they did,
until they in turn become spoiled. I can think of no position better
calculated to ruin a young man than to commission him in a cavalry
regiment. Now take my advice. Do not run in debt for a new uniform and
a silver mounted sword, and don't put a stock of whisky and cigars into
your tent, and keep open house, because when your whisky and cigars are
gone, those who drank and smoked them will not think as much of you as
before, and you will have formed habits that will illy prepare you for
your work. You will not make any friends among good officers, and you
will lose the respect of the men who have known you when you were one of
them, but who will laugh at you for getting the big head and going back
on those who are just as good as you are, but who have not yet attained
the dignity of wearing shoulder straps. I meet officers every day, who
were good soldiers before they were raised from privates, and they show
signs of dissipation, and have a hard look, leering at women, and trying
to look _blase_. They try to act as near like foreign noblemen who are
officers, as they can, from reading of their antics, but Americans
just from farms, workshops, commercial pursuits, and the back woods
and country villages of the north, are not of the material that foreign
officials are made of, and in trying to imitate them they only show
their shallowness. Do not, I beg of you, change one particle from what
you have been as a private soldier, unless it is to have your pants fit
better, and wear a collar. Of course, you will be thrown among officers
more than you have before. Imitate their better qualities, and do not
compete with them in vices. Always remember that when a volunteer army
is mustered out, all are alike. The private, who has business ability,
will become rich and respected, after the war, while the officer, who
has been promoted through favoritism, and who acquires bad habits, will
keep going down hill, and will be glad to drive a delivery wagon for the
successful private, whom he commanded