APPENDIX. Note A.—Page 8. MILITARY PREPARATIONS OF THE SOUTH. The author here repeats in his estimate of the advantages with which the insurgent South began the war, an impression so general at the North that it may be considered to have become almost an article of faith, yet which I am constrained to believe erroneous. The “permanent militia” of the South here alluded to existed only upon paper, like the similar militia of the North. There were, it is true, in two or three of the States, and particularly in South Carolina and in Virginia, small bodies of troops maintained at the public expense for the protection of important arsenals or other public works, but these were insignificant in point of numbers. The “State Guard ” of Virginia numbered not more, I think, than forty men, whose chief duty was to sentinel the Richmond Penitentiary and to inspect the statue of Henry Clay on the Capitol Square. The organization of the Southern militia was very far from deserving the encomium here passed upon it. It was in-truth far inferior to the organization of the militia in certain States of the North, and particularly in Massachusetts and New York. The regimental organization which had been carried to such a respectable point of development in New York was almost unknown in the South. A few independent companies like the “Blues” of Richmond and Savannah, the “Washington Light Infantry ” of Charleston, the “Washington Artillery” of New Orleans, and the “Richmond Howitzers” (101)
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