Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/323

 The Guard was established under Hartranft for the defense of the state and has been maintained by it for many years at great expense. Should the state ever be invaded, and the occasion arise for its use, it will, just when it is needed, be a part of the national force, subject to national control and perhaps called to a distant point. The nation ought to have been left to provide its own army and militia. The arrangement was, besides, another step in the direction of the obliteration of the states, a tendency which good sense will ever be on the watch to resist.

In July the First Brigade went into camp at Perkasie, the Third Brigade at Mount Gretna, and the Second Brigade at Somerset. At each camp I inspected and reviewed the troops and lived in a tent. To me the object appeared to be not one of formal display, but that the governor should be enabled to gain a knowledge of the force and be in a better position to use it if need be, and in the meantime to provide for its wants. Therefore, I went on foot through the camps, looking into the tents and their appointments and into the kitchens. Therefore I accompanied the Inspector-General, Colonel Frank G. Sweeney, a keen-eyed fellow, along the lines, seeing every man of the ten thousand, and I vied with him in the discovery of omitted attention to discipline. At Mount Gretna I told a private that he had his bayonet reversed, whereupon the United States Army colonel who was with the party declared that he knew it to be mechanically impossible. The colonel was shown that the thing had occurred, nevertheless, and the story ran all over the camp. I likewise refused to ride a horse on review and overlooked the marching of the troops from a barouche or on foot. Stewart did his best to dissuade me from this step because it was an innovation upon which the newspapers would be sure to seize and he was very anxious for the welfare of his Guard. There were several reasons for this course. In my youth I had often ridden forty miles on a stretch, and in young Rh