in their places in the army, were
shamelessly absent when their brothers-in-arms were being sacrificed
from their very want of numbers. Wounded soldiers who had come home on
furlough, and afterwards recovered, had never rejoined their commands;
and in spite of the calls of McClellan no steps had been taken to force
them back into the ranks. The Provost Marshals were too busy looking for
summer-boarders at Fort Lafayette and Fort Warren, to think of their
obvious duty of protecting the armies of the Union against indolence and
desertion! A still more serious defection existed among the
officers--those who had been awhile in the service, and those who had
merely entered it in _pretence_. Half the New York regiments,
especially, had originally been officered by men who had no intention of
fighting, and who merely took commissions and spent a few weeks in camp
or in the field of inactive operations, in order that they might have
"Colonel," "Major," or "Captain" attached to their names, and be ready
to make more successful plunges into the flesh-pots of well-paid
offices, on the plea that they had been "patriots" and "served the
country" in its need. Hundreds had come home, leaving their commands
half-officered, on one pretext or another, and their leaves-of-absence
obtained by more or less of political influence or favoritism. They
never intended to go back; for were not the elections coming within a
few months? and was it not necessary to plough the political field with
those very harmless swords in order to raise a fall crop of offices?

Then the other class--those who had never intended to go at all--those
who had no heart in the cause, from the first, and who had merely
assumed the regulation uniform to feed _vanity_ or the _pocket_. The
former, to strut Broadway in unimpeachable blue-and-gold, be called by
military titles, lounge at the theatres or create sensations at the
watering-places, confident of being able to escape, on some pretext,
before their commands (if they had any) should leave for the seat of
war. The latter, to find profitable employment in raising companies,
regiments or brigades, for Staten Island, East New York or the Red
House, drawing pay and subsistence for twice or three times the number
ever in camp, and coolly pocketing the difference! It is idle to talk,
as exaggerating sensation-paragraphists sometimes do, of stealing the
pennies off the eyes of a dead grandmother to play at pitch-and-toss,