Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/162

 It was a life full of most interesting experiences. It inspired me with a very high esteem for the American volunteer soldier, who, in the aggregate, might have been called the American people in arms. Nothing could have been more magnificent than the patriotic ardor with which the youth of the country,—native and foreign-born alike—crowded around the flag of the Republic when President Lincoln called for defenders of the Union. Among those who filled the ranks there were no doubt some adventurous spirits whom the prospects of a fight would have attracted under any circumstances. But it is equally true, doubtless, that the overwhelming majority consisted of men who simply obeyed the voice of duty, which called them, as American citizens, to abandon the daily pursuits of peace, and to offer their lives as a sacrifice to their country on the field of war. And this patriotic enthusiasm at the beginning of the war was by no means a mere momentary, short-lived effervescence. It was a moral element of steadiness, supplying what the volunteer army lacked in discipline. Although the volunteer gradually acquired a sound appreciation of the exigencies of the service as to strict obedience to orders and the observance of certain formalities, yet he never quite accommodated himself to the strait-laced regulations and practices to which the regular soldier is subjected. He was a volunteer not only when he entered the army, but, in a certain sense, he remained largely a volunteer in the course of the war—that is to say, he did or suffered many things not merely because he knew that, as a soldier, he simply must do or suffer them, but because, from his moral sense of duty, he chose to do or suffer them. In what he considered non-essentials his habits were exceedingly loose. The relations between privates and company or regimental, and even higher officers, never were free from that instinctive feeling of equality