s of their
methods, and possibly end the rebellion at once.

You know the rest. But it must be very shocking to a person of your
views to remember that the old Queen Anne muskets, shot guns and duck
guns which your forefathers in such bad taste and contrary to all
military science, levelled over those fence rails and hay at your
friends the British in beautiful uniforms, were loaded with buckshot,
slugs, old nails, and bits of iron from the blacksmith shops. That was
our Majuba Hill, our Spion Kop.

Let us move along still farther. The New England farmers for all the
rest of the summer, autumn and following winter formed themselves into a
most vulgar and absurd army and surrounded Boston, shutting in the
British. The minds of those farmers were full almost to fanaticism of
the principle of equality and the rights of man, "the levelling
principles" as they were then called which now form the foundation of
our American life. The officers among them were merely leaders and
persuaders. It was not an uncommon sight to see a colonel shaving one of
his own men. The men served a few weeks and then went home to get in the
hay or see how their wives were getting on, and others came from the
farms to take their places. In this way the army was kept up. Those who
went home were very apt to take their powder and musket with them to
shoot squirrels on the farm.

A year later at New York our army was the same guerilla force and I
shall let Captain Graydon describe it:

"The appearance of things was not much calculated to excite
sanguine expectations in the mind of a sober observer. Great
numbers of people were indeed to be seen and those who are not
accustomed to the sight of bodies under arms are always prone to
exaggerate them. But the propensity to swell the mass, has not an
equal tendency to convert it into soldiery; and the irregularity,
want of discipline, bad arms, and defective equipment in all
respects, of this multitudinous assemblage, gave no favorable
impression of its prowess. The materials of which the eastern
battalions were composed, were apparently the same as those of
which I had seen so unpromising a specimen at Lake George. I speak
particularly of the officers who were in no single respect
distinguishable from the men, other than in the colored cockades,
which for this very purpose had been prescribed in general orders;
a different colo