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

But let us hasten to reduce to their proper proportions these details, which, striking the eyes of Europeans recently landed, may have led them to form erroneous opinions of the American army. In spite of all they could say, it was an essentially national army, both in sentiment and in the materials of which it was composed. The soldiers for the most part were animated by a sincere desire to serve the national cause, and the proportion of different elements which constituted its strength accurately represented the whole American nation.

A thousand examples might be cited of soldiers and officers who sacrificed lucrative positions to join the regular army. The records of war-victims abound with the names of wealthy and honored citizens, not a few of whom were advanced in years and surrounded by a numerous family. Side by side with the old West Pointers who had resumed the military harness were men possessed of no practical military knowledge, but who, like Wadsworth, Shaw, and many others, were at least determined to set an example of the cause which finally cost them their lives. Many American villages displayed the same disinterestedness as Phoenixville, in Pennsylvania, which, almost exclusively inhabited by blacksmiths, the least skilful of whom could, during the war, earn in a week more than a soldier's pay for a month, alone furnished an entire company.

Individual examples may always be set aside, yet it would be easy to prove, in a general way, that the rapidity of enlistments is to be attributed, not to want of work, but to earnest patriotism. If a few branches of industry had to suspend operations, business in general was but little affected by the shock of the war; if the Federal flag experienced reverses, the chief occupation of the laboring population of America—the cultivation of cereals—continued to flourish; and although a few families were ruined, the New World was not afflicted for a single day with the pauperism which stalks abroad in the most civilized States of Europe. Wages, already very high, increased in proportion as the ranks of the army were filling up, rendering workmen scarce. The constant increase in the rate of bounties shows that, in a purely business point of