in the habit of mutual reliance. They feel each other's
elbows, in military parlance--they are assured by the custom of
mutually depending one upon the other. This habit impresses them with a
conviction, which the terrors of conflict do not often impair, that they
will not be deserted; and, thus assured, they hurry into the battle, and
remain in it so long as the body with which they move can act together.
Once broken, however, the cry is 'sauve qui peut'. Not so with
militia-men. They never forget their individuality. The very feeling of
personal independence is apt to impair their confidence in one another.
Their habit is to obey the individual impulse. They do not wait to
take their temper from their neighbor right and left. Hence their
irregularity--the difficulty of restraining them--of making them act in
routine, and with entire reference to the action of other bodies. So far
from deriving strength from feeling another's elbow, they much prefer
elbow room. Could they be assured of one another, they were the greatest
troops in the world. They ARE the greatest troops in the world--capable
of the most daring and heroic achievements--wherever the skill of
the commander can inspire this feeling of mutual reliance. Frequent
cooperation of the same persons under the same leader produces it,
and makes them veterans. The old soldiers of the brigade had it in
perfection. It was one of the excellences of Marion that it followed so
certainly and rapidly from his peculiar training. That it should be
lost or impaired, was a most serious evil. That it would not have been
endangered, we are sure, had it not been that the brigade no longer
consisted of the brave fellows who had clung to him through the
campaigns of the last two years. The new recruits were, in all
probability, to blame for the mischance; and something, perhaps, is due
to the unhappy quarrel between Mayham and Horry. The former was terribly
mortified by the affair--mortified that Marion should have hurried
to the scene of action without apprising him, and vexed that his own
regiment should have behaved so badly. He complains that others should
"expend the strength of the regiment without giving HIM the satisfaction
of being present." Captain John Caraway Smith, the officer who led the
column thus disastrously aside, resigned the day after the affair. His
conduct had been habitually brave. But a short time before, as already
shown, he had behaved with the most determ