Page:American Boy's Life of William McKinley.djvu/60

34 Revolution the soldiers of the South fought as well as did the soldiers of the North. They are surely in earnest, or they wouldn't have bombarded Fort Sumter."

"Oh, they knew they had a sure thing there," was the reply. "It was their game from the start. But when we meet them on an open battlefield, they will sing a different tune."

So the talk ran on, the majority thinking that going to war was to be very much like a huge "picnic," as some expressed it. A few thought the rebellion would last six months, but the majority thought that thirty or sixty days would see its conclusion. Could they have foreseen those four long years of blood and carnage, how they would have shuddered!

The volunteering of the recruits was followed by drilling on the town green. There were no uniforms, and not enough muskets to go around, and the officers wore only belts and swords. At first the company was an awkward one, and the mistakes made in military tactics were laughable. Here William McKinley learned to "line up," "march," "wheel," and the like, and