Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[283] of that description should certainly not be despised; but they are fatal boons to the general whom they keep inside of his tent at a moment when nothing can replace the coup-d'oeil of the master and the presence of the chief among his soldiers.

In speaking of the organization of the American armies, we cannot omit to mention a few of the distinctive features of the volunteers who composed them.

These armies differed from ours in the large number of married men they contained. In America there are no military laws to interfere with marriage, and the American, who is but little addicted to domestic habits and is the artificer of his own fortune, does not enter into those calculations concerning family expenses which stifle the spirit of enterprise in a nation, and eventually impoverish its population both morally and numerically. The war acted as a stimulus to marriage—among the officers, in the hope of being cared for by female hands if wounded; among the soldiers, because the States had assured a certain indemnity to their wives and a liberal pension to their widows.

Excellent workmen wherever there was any engineering work required, the volunteers were to show themselves industrious in mitigating the rigors of camp and bivouac, as they had learned from infancy to improvise among the forests light shelters or solid dwellings. From the first day's halt the tents were replaced by roofs made of the boughs of trees, generally pitched on the skirts of a wood; for experience soon demonstrated how unhealthy it is to encamp under the thick foliage, which does not allow the air to circulate freely. When snow and ice came to surprise the army of the Potomac encamped around Washington, the soldiers did not wait for orders to go into winter quarters to provide against these new enemies—orders which a general never issued, except to deceive the enemy and when he has determined to break up the camp suddenly. As soon as the first cold weather made itself felt through the tents every one set his ingenuity to work to devise means of warmth. Only a few tents, conically shaped, with a hole at the top, like Indian huts, admitted the introduction of cast-iron stoves. In the others they constructed a hearth of hardened clay or of wood covered with mud; barrels placed one on the top of another served as chimneys; an excavation running the length of