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| Making an army — the twenty-sixth New York Passing before us is a regiment that is yet to taste war in its reality. The regimental drum corps is in position, and, as the marching men step out smartly, the camera catches them as perfectly as would the instantaneous photography of to-day. The scene is within Fort Lyon--one of the outlying defenses of Washington below Alexandria. To the defenses established about the capital came the raw recruits who flocked to the standard of the Union at the call of President Lincoln. Not only were they to serve as defenders of the capital, but here, during the winter of 1861-2, they were made into soldiers for service in the field. McClellan is said to have created an army out of a mob during this period, but the men we see before us — the Twenty-Sixth New York--although green at the game of war when they enlisted, came from stock that makes good soldiers, and from the State which furnished the most men to the Federal cause and suffered the heaviest losses in battle during the struggle. The Twenty-Sixth was one of the two-years regiments and its term of service covered some of the hardest fighting in the war. It went into the battle of Fredericksburg 300 strong, and came out with a loss of 170, nearly sixty per cent. |
