Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

"Have you seen almost enough?" asked Lieutenant Woodruff, of the two citizens.

"Quite enough!" said both in a breath.

"Well, time is just up," said the Lieutenant. "And in good time comes the drum-beat for evening parade. Come along, and see what it is like. I must leave you, but you can see the display without me."

A couple of snare-drums were rattling somewhere among the tents, and the shrill notes of a light infantry bugle sounded. Lieut. Colonel Burns buckled his sword belts a little tighter and straightened himself to a soldierly bearing, as he left the room with his friends. A sergeant took down the guidons, and all, except the one Lieutenant at the desk and two or three soldiers who did not consider the call as of sufficient consequence, followed them down to the parade-ground in front of the camp. Col. Egbert Crawford seemed to be like the two or three soldiers named, and not to consider the call of consequence enough to demand any attention on his part; for he did not, at least during the stay of Smith and Brown, emerge from the privacy of the inner room or make any movement to superintend the "dress parade."

That "dress parade" completed the experience of Smith and Brown; and it completed, at the same time, their knowledge of the numbers and efficiency of the Two Hundredth Regiment that was "almost ready to march." In squads of from ten to twenty-five, the soldiers gathered from their slovenly tents, until the observers could count something more than two hundred. Then by squads and afterwards in what was intended as a "regimental formation," they went through a series of marchings, countermarchings and facings, with about the proficiency which would be shown by the same number of entirely raw recruits, and with the same proportion of the most obvious blunderings that used to be exhibited by the "slab-companies" at the "general trainings" or "general musters" in the country sections, when a lamentable caricature upon military spirit was kept up, in the years following the War of 1812.

Not a musket was to be seen in the hands of one of these men, except the few sentries. They "had not been furnished," as the explanation was sure to be given afterwards when the regiment was discovered to be an undisciplined mob! They would probably not be "furnished" until just at the moment when the regiment should be forced to move, and then they would be put into hands liable to be called on to use them in battle within a week—those hands knowing no more of the management of the deadly instrument of modern warfare, than so many Sioux or South Sea Islanders might have known of watch-making or extracting the cube-root.

And yet with these men, and in this manner, the armies of the republic were being recruited; and on the deeds in arms wrought by these men, possibly in the very first conflict into which they were rushed like huddled sheep, the eyes of the military nations of Europe were to be turned with anxious interest. They were to fight, too, against a race of men to whom deadly weapons had been familiar from childhood, and who would consequently make soldiers, to the full extent of their capability, with one-half the training which was to these Northern men an absolute necessity! Is it any wonder that we have occasionally met with a Bull Run or a Second Field of Manassas, with this shameful waste of our opportunities and our war-material?

Smith and Brown left "Camp Lyon," before the completion of the "dress parade," with a him consciousness of being painfully disenchanted in a very important particular.

"Do you know, Smith" said Brown, as they were rolling along in the car, homeward—"that I doubt whether there are three hundred men in that regiment, absentees and all—instead of seven hundred as the papers report?"

"Humph," said Smith, "it seems to be all a humbug together! But I wonder what becomes of the extra pay issued to seven hundred men, when there are only three hundred entitled to receive it? And I wonder what becomes of all the extra rations that are drawn for them every day? Somebody must be making something out of it—eh? I wonder if there are any more regiments in the same condition?"