e a brave
parade. On ceremonial occasions the long hair of the men would be tied
back and made white with powder, even though their uniforms were little
more than rags.

The men carried weapons some of which, in, at any rate, the early days
of the war, were made by hand at the village smithy. A man might take
to the war a weapon forged by himself. The American soldier had this
advantage over the British soldier, that he used, if not generally, at
least in some cases, not the smooth-bore musket but the grooved rifle
by which the ball was made to rotate in its flight. The fire from this
rifle was extremely accurate. At first weapons were few and ammunition
was scanty, but in time there were importations from France and also
supplies from American gun factories. The standard length of the barrel
was three and a half feet, a portentous size compared with that of the
modern weapon. The loading was from the muzzle, a process so slow that
one of the favorite tactics of the time was to await the fire of the
enemy and then charge quickly and bayonet him before he could reload.
The old method of firing off the musket by means of slow matches
kept alight during action was now obsolete; the latest device was the
flintlock. But there was always a measure of doubt whether the weapon
would go off. Partly on this account Benjamin Franklin, the wisest man
of his time, declared for the use of the pike of an earlier age rather
than the bayonet and for bows and arrows instead of firearms. A soldier,
he said, could shoot four arrows to one bullet. An arrow wound was more
disabling than a bullet wound; and arrows did not becloud the
vision with smoke. The bullet remained, however, the chief means of
destruction, and the fire of Washington's soldiers usually excelled that
of the British. These, in their turn, were superior in the use of the
bayonet.

Powder and lead were hard to get. The inventive spirit of America was
busy with plans to procure saltpeter and other ingredients for making
powder, but it remained scarce. Since there was no standard firearm,
each soldier required bullets specially suited to his weapon. The men
melted lead and cast it in their own bullet-molds. It is an instance of
the minor ironies of war that the great equestrian statue of George III,
which had been erected in New York in days more peaceful, was melted
into bullets for killing that monarch's soldiers. Another necessity was
paper for cartridges and wads. The c