g the black males of all ages on
the plantations and in the towns. The soldiers are of the healthier
ages, 20 to 40, but the civilians include both the young and the old: if
these could be excluded, and the comparison made between soldiers and
laborers of the same ages, the difference in favor of civil pursuits
would appear much greater.

Throughout the world, where the armies of Great Britain are stationed or
serve, the death-rate is greater among the troops than among civilians
of the same races and ages, except among the colored troops in Tobago,
Montserrat, Antigua, and Granada in America, and among the Sepoys in the
East Indies.[10]

In the army of the United States, during the period from 1840 to 1854,
not including the two years of the Mexican War, there was an average of
9,278 men, or an aggregate of 120,622 years of service, equal to so many
men serving one year. Among these and during this period, there were
342,107 cases of sickness reported by the surgeons, and 3,416 deaths
from disease, showing a rate of mortality of 2.83 per cent., or two and
a half times as great as that among the males of Massachusetts of the
army-ages, and three times as great as that in England and Wales. The
attacks of sickness average almost three for each man in each year. This
is manifestly more than that which falls upon men of these ages at
home.[11]

SICKNESS AND MORTALITY OF THE ARMY IN WAR.

Thus far the sickness and mortality of the army in time of peace only
has been considered. The experience of war tells a more painful story of
the dangers of the men engaged in it. Sir John Pringle states, that, in
the British armies that were sent to the Low Countries and Germany, in
the years 1743 to 1747, a great amount of sickness and mortality
prevailed. He says, that, besides those who were suffering from wounds,
"at some periods more than one-fifth of the army were in the hospitals."
"One regiment had over one-half of its men sick." "In July and August,
1743, one-half of the army had the dysentery." "In 1747, four
battalions," of 715 men each, "at South Beveland and Walcheren, both in
field and in quarters, were so very sickly, that, at the height of the
epidemic, some of these corps had but one hundred men fit for duty;
six-sevenths of their numbers were sick."[12] "At the end of the
campaign the Royal Battalion had but four men who had not been ill." And
"when these corps went into winter-quarters, their sick, in proportion
t