We removed from the wagon the mail-bags containing letters for the camp, and made ourselves at home with the hospitable Gilbert. On the next day, after “morning glory” and breakfast, we called upon the officer commanding the department, Colonel P. St. G. Cooke, of the 2d Dragoons, and upon the commandant of the cantonment, Lieutenant Colonel C. F. Smith. They introduced us to the greater part of the officers, and, though living in camp fashion, did not fail to take in the strangers after the ancient, not the modern, acceptation of the term. It is a sensible pleasure, which every military man has remarked, to exchange the common run of civilian for soldier society in the United States. The reveillé in the morning speaks of discipline; the guard-mounting has a wholesome military sound; there is a habit of ’tention and of saluting which suggests some subordination; the orderlies say “Sir,” not Sirree nor Sirree-bob. The stiffness and ungeniality of professionals, who are all running a race for wealth or fame, give way in a service of seniority, and where men become brothers, to the frankness which belongs to the trade of arms. The Kshatriya, or fighting caste, in the States is distinctly marked. The officers, both of the navy and the army, are, for the most part, Southerners, and are separated by their position from general society. The civilian, as was the case in England twenty years ago, dislikes the uniform. His principal boasts are, that he pays his fighting servants well, and that he—a militia-man—is far superior to the regular. A company of Cadets, called the Chicago Zouaves, during the summer of 1860, made a sensation throughout the land. The newspaper writers spoke of them in terms far higher than have been lavished upon the flower of the French army; even the military professionals were obliged to join in the cry. As a republican, the citizen looks upon a soldier as a drone. “I hate those cormorants,” said to me an American diplomat, who, par parenthèse, had made a fortune by the law, as he entered a Viennese café. L’arte della guerra presto s’ impara is his motto, and he evinces his love of the civilian element by giving away a considerable percentage of commissions in the army to those whose political influence enables them to dispense with the preparation of West Point.

I am here tempted to a few words concerning the cheap defense and the chief pride of the United States, viz., her irregular army. The opposite [table] shows the forces of the militiaUNITED STATES MILITIA. to be three millions, while the regular army does not number 19,000. The institution is, therefore, a kind of public, a writing, speaking, voting body, which makes itself heard and felt, while the existence of the regulars is almost ignored. To hint aught against the militia in the United States is sure seriously to “rile up” your civil audience, and Elijah Pogram will perhaps let you know that you can not know what you are talking about. The outspoken Britisher, despite his title and his rank as a general officer, had a “squeak” for his commission when, in the beginning of the volunteer mania, he spoke of the new levies as a useless body of men: it is on the same principle in the United States. Thus also the liberal candidate declares to his electors his “firm belief that, with all our enormous expenditure, the country had not felt itself secure, and straightway a noble arm of defense, springing unbought from the patriotism of the people, had crept into existence, forming a better shield for our national liberties than all that we had been able to buy with our mounds of gold.” (Cheers.) The civilian in the United States boasts of his military institutions, his West Point and his regular army, and never fails to inform a stranger that it is better paid than any force in Europe. On the other hand, he prides himself upon, as he is probably identified with, the militia.

MILITIA FORCE OF THE UNITED STATES.
General Abstract of the Militia Force of the United States, according to the latest Returns received at the Office of the Adjutant General.

States
and
Territories.		For
the
Year		General
Officers.		General
Staff
Officers.		Field
Officers,
etc.		Company
Officers.		Total
commis-
sioned
Officers.		Non-
commis-
sioned
Officers,
Musicians,
Artificers,
and
Privates.		Aggregate.
Maine1856 13   52   36   230  340   73,248   73,552
New Hampshire1854 11  202  119   895 1,227   32,311   33,538
Massachusetts1859 10   47  111   353  521  157,347  157,868
Vermont1843 12   51  224   801 1,088   22,827   23,915
Rhode Island1858  2   22  106    26  156   16,555   16,711
Connecticut1858  3    9   82   199  293   51,312   51,605
New York1856 93  2991,531 5,495 7,388  329,847  337,235
New Jersey1852........................   81,984
Pennsylvania1858........................  350,000
Delaware1827  4    8   71   364  447    8,782    9,229
Maryland1838 22   68  544 1,763 2,397   44,467   46,864
Virginia1858........................  150,000
North Carolina1845 28  133  657 3,449 4,267   75,181   79,448
South Carolina1856 20  135  535 1,909 2,599   33,473   36,072
Georgia1850 39   91  624 4,296 5,050   73,649   78,699
Florida1845  3   14   95   508  620   11,502   12,122
Alabama1851 32  142  775 1,883 2,832   73,830   76,662
Louisiana1859 16  129  542 2,105 2,792   88,532   91,324
Mississippi1838 15   70  856   348  825   35,259   36,084
Tennessee1840 25   79  392 2,644 3,607   67,645   71,252
Kentucky1852 43  1451,165 3,517 4,870   84,109   88,979
Ohio1858........................  279,809
Michigan1854 30  123  147 2,358 2,858   94,236   97,094
Indiana1832 31  110  566 2,154 2,861   51,052   53,913
Illinois1855........................  257,420
Wisconsin1855 15    8  215   904 1,142   50,179   51,321
Iowa
Missouri1853....   17    4    67   88  117,959  118,047
Arkansas1859 10   39  179   911 1,139   46,611   47,750
Texas1847 15   45  248   940 1,248   18,518   19,766
California1857 18  126   11   175  330  207,400  207,730
Minnesota1859........................   23,972
Oregon
Washington Territory
Nebraska Territory
Kansas Territory
Territory of Utah1853  2....   48   235  285    2,536    2,821
Territory of N. Mexico
District of Columbia1852  3   10   28   185  226    7,975    8,201
Grand aggregate....5152,3749,88438,68751,4601,876,3423,070,987

That writing, speaking, and voting have borne fruit in favor of the militia, may be read in the history of the Americo-Mexican War. The fame of the irregulars penetrated to Calcutta and China: it was stopped only by the Orient sun. But who ever heard of the regulars? The “newspaper heroes” were almost all militiamen, rangers, and other guerrillas: “keeping an editor in pay” is now a standing sarcasm. The sages of the Revolution initiated a yeomanry second to none in the world: they had, however, among them crowds of frontiersmen accustomed to deal with the bear and the Indian, not with the antelope and the deer. The Texan Rangers in later times were a first-rate body of men for irregular purposes, not to be confounded with the militia, yet always put forward as a proof how superior to the “sweepings of cities,” as the regular army was once called in the Senate, are the irregulars, who “never fire a random shot, never draw trigger till their aim is sure,” and are “here to-night and to-morrow are fifty miles off.” But the true modern militia is pronounced by the best authorities—indeed, by all who hold it no economy to be ill served, for any but purely defensive purposes, a humbug, which costs in campaigns more blood and gold—neglect of business is perhaps the chief item of the expenditure—than a standing army would. As a “Garde Nationale” it is quite efficient. When called out for distant service, as in the Mexican War, every pekin fault becomes apparent. Personally the men suffer severely from unaccustomed hardship and exposure; in dangerous climates they die like sheep; half are in hospital, and the other half must nurse them: Nature soon becomes stronger than martial law; under the fatigue of the march they will throw away their rations and military necessaries rather than take the trouble to carry them: improvident and wasteful, their convoys are timid and unmanageable. Mentally they are in many cases men ignoring the common restraints of society, profoundly impressed with insubordination, which displays equality, which has to learn all the wholesome duty of obedience, and which begins with as much respect for discipline as for the campaigns of Frederick the Great. If inclined to retire, they can stay at home and obtain double or treble the wages: not a few are driven to service by that enthusiasm which, as Sir Charles Napier well remarked, readily makes men run away. Their various defects make organization painfully slow. In camp they amuse themselves with drawing rations, target practice, asking silly questions, electing officers, holding meetings, issuing orders, disobeying orders, “’cussing and discussing:” the sentinels will sit down to a quiet euchre after planting their bayonets in the ground, and to all attempts at dislodging them the reply will be, “You go to ——, Cap.! I’m as good a man as you.” In the field, like all raw levies, they are apt to be alarmed by any thing unaccustomed, as the sound of musketry from the rear, or a threatened flank attack: they can not reserve their fire; they aim wildly, to the peril of friend and foe, and they have been accused of unmilitary cruelties, such as scalping and flaying men, shooting and killing squaws and children. And they never fail, after the fashion of such men, to claim that they have done all the fighting.[187]

[187] These remarks were penned in 1860; I see no reason to alter them in 1861.

Such is, I believe, the United States militia at the beginning of a campaign. After a reasonable time, say a year, which kills off the weak and sickly, and rubs out the brawler and the mutineer; when men have learned to distinguish the difference between the often Dutch courage of a bowie-knife squabble and the moral fortitude that stands firm in presence of famine or a night attack, then they become regulars. The American—by which I understand a man whose father is born in the United States—is a first-rate soldier, distinguished by his superior intelligence from his compeers in other lands; but he rarely takes to soldiering. There are not more than five of these men per company, the rest being all Germans and Irishmen. The percentage in the navy is greater, yet it is still inconsiderable. The Mexican War, as History writes it, is the triumph of the militia, whom old “Rough and Ready” led to conquest as to a “manifest destiny.”[188] On the other hand, the old and distinguished officer who succeeded General Taylor has occasionally, it is said, given utterance to opinions concerning the irregulars which contrast strongly with those generally attributed to him.

[188] And it will be remembered, the Mexicans were not Austrians or Russians.

At Camp Floyd I found feeling running high against the Mormons. “They hate us, and we hate them,” said an intelligent officer; consequently, every statement here, as in the city, must be received with many grains of salt. At Camp Floyd one hearsHATRED AND MURDER. the worst version of every fact, which, as usual hereabouts, has its many distinct facets. These anti-Mormons declare that ten murders per annum during the last twelve years have been committed without punishment in New Zion, whereas New York averages 18-33. They attribute the phenomenon to the impossibility of obtaining testimony, and the undue whitewashing action of juries, which the Mormons declare to be “punctual and hard-working in sustaining the dignity of the law,” and praise for their “unparalleled habits of industry and sobriety, order, and respect to just rights.” Whatever objection I made was always answered by the deception of appearances, and the assertion that whenever a stranger enters Great Salt Lake City, one or two plausible Mormons are told off to amuse and hoodwink him. Similarly the Mormons charge the Christians with violent injustice. On a late occasion, the mayor of Springville, Mr. H. F. Macdonald, and the bishop were seized simply because they were Church dignitaries, on the occasion of a murder, and the former, after durance vile of months at Camp Floyd, made his escape and walks about a free man, swearing that he will not again be taken alive. In 1853, Captain J. W. Gunnison and seven of his party were murdered near Nicollet on Sevier River, twenty-five miles south of Nephi City. The anti-Mormons declare that the deed was done under high counsel, by “white Indians,” to prevent the exploration of a route to California, and the disclosures which were likely to be made. The Mormons point to their kind treatment of the previous expedition upon which the lamented officer was engaged, to the friendliness of his book, to the circumstance that an Indian war was then raging, and that during the attack an equal number of Yuta Indians were killed. M. Remy distinctly refers the murder to the Pahvant Indians, some of whom had been recently shot by emigrants to California.[189] The horrible “Mountain Meadow Massacre”[190] was, according to the anti-Mormons, committed by the Saints to revenge the death of an esteemed apostle—Parley P. Pratt—who, in the spring of 1857, when traveling through Arkansas, was knived by one Hector M‘Lean, whose wife he had converted and taken unto himself. The Mormons deny that the massacre was committed by their number, and ask the Gentiles why, if such be the case, the murderers are not brought to justice? They look upon Mr. P. P. Pratt’s proceeding—even in El Islam, the women of the infidels are, like their property, halal, or lawful to those who win them—as perfectly justifiable.[191] In February, 1859, occurred sundry disturbances between the soldiers and citizens at Rush Valley, thirty-five miles west of Great Salt Lake City, in which Mr. Howard Spencer, nephew to Mr. Daniel Spencer, a squatter, while being removed from a government reservation by SERGEANT PIKE.First Sergeant Ralph Pike of the 10th Infantry, raised a pitchfork, and received in return a broken head. Shortly afterward the sergeant, having been summoned to Great Salt Lake City, was met in Main Street and shot down before all present. The anti-Mormons, of course, declare the deed to have been done by Mr. Spencer, and hold it, under the circumstances—execution of duty and summons of justice—an unpardonable outrage; and the officers assert that they could hardly prevent their men arming and personally revenging the foul murder of a comrade, who was loved as an excellent soldier and an honest man.[192] The Mormons assert that the “shooting” was done by an unknown hand; that the sergeant had used unnecessary violence against a youth, who, single-handed and surrounded by soldiers, had raised a pitchfork to defend his head, and that the provocation thus received converted the case from murder to one of justifiable homicide. In the month of June before my arrival, a Lieutenant Saunders and Assistant Surgeon Covey had tied to a cart’s tail and severely flogged Mr. Hennefer,MR. HENNEFER. a Mormon. The opposition party assert that they recognized in him the man who two years before had acted as a spy upon them when sitting in Messrs. Livingston’s store, and, when ordered to “make tracks,” had returned with half a dozen others, and had shot Dr. Covey in the breast. The Mormons represent Mr. Hennefer to be a peaceful citizen, and quiet, unoffending man, thus brutally outraged by tyrannical servants of government, and, moreover, prove for him an alibi from the original cause of quarrel. I have given but a few instances: all are equally contradictory, and tantas componere lites quis audet?

[189] See Translation, vol. i., p. 463.