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15]
Statistics of the Three Months Volunteers.
When we stop to consider what an utterly peaceful community had been, until within a week or two, that which these regiments represented, it is impossible not to admire the promptness with which they took up arms.
In the later fatigues of the war we looked back almost with wonder on the enthusiasm which had welcomed these early regiments.
They had encountered little danger, and some of them had scarcely heard a shot fired in anger; yet
Napoleon's veterans could hardly have been received with more reverence and gratitude.
The instinct was just, for it was really these militia regiments, and such as these, which had saved the nation during that first period of peril.
While the early recruiting was going hastily on in
Massachusetts, there occurred striking cases of persons whose zeal urged them to the front, to give their aid at
Washington.
One of the most noticeable of these instances
