their
weapons. The superior accuracy of aim which the American has obtained by
practice from his early youth, has enabled our militia to gain, under
the protection of military works, victories as brilliant as the most
veteran troops. The moral courage necessary to await an attack behind a
parapet, is at least equal to that exerted in the open field, where
_movements_ generally determine the victory. To watch the approach of an
enemy, to see him move up and display his massive columns, his long
array of military equipments, his fascines and scaling-ladders, his
instruments of attack, and the professional skill with which he wields
them, to hear the thunder of his batteries, spreading death all around,
and to repel, hand to hand, those tremendous assaults, which stand out
in all their horrible relief upon the canvass of modern warfare,
requires a heart at least as brave as the professional warrior exhibits
in the pitched battle.

But we must not forget that to call this force into the open field,--to
take the mechanic from his shop, the merchant from his counter, the
farmer from his plough,--will necessarily be attended with an immense
sacrifice of human life. The lives lost on the battle-field are not the
only ones; militia, being unaccustomed to exposure, and unable to supply
their own wants with certainty and regularity, contract diseases which
occasion in every campaign a most frightful mortality.

There is also a vast difference in the cost of supporting regulars and
militia forces. The cost of a regular army of twenty thousand men for a
campaign of six months, in this country, has been estimated, from data
in the War-office, at a hundred and fifty dollars per man; while the
cost of a militia force, under the same circumstances, making allowance
for the difference in the expenses from sickness, waste of
camp-furniture, equipments, &c., will be two hundred and fifty dollars
per man. But in short campaigns, and in irregular warfare, like the
expedition against Black Hawk and his Indians in the Northwest, and
during the hostilities in Florida, "the expenses of the militia," says
Mr. Secretary Spencer, in a report to congress in 1842, "invariably
exceed those of regulars by _at least three hundred per cent_." It is
further stated that "_fifty-five thousand militia_ were called into
service during the Black Hawk and Florida wars, and that _thirty
millions of dollars have been expended in these conflicts_!" When it is
r