circumstances it cannot but be interesting to the patriots in the camp
and to their families at home to know some facts which they cannot have
heard before of the mistakes made at the beginning of the last Russian
war, and the repair of those mistakes before the end of it. The prompt
and anxious care exercised by the American Sanitary Commission, and the
benevolent diligence bestowed on the organization of hospitals for the
Federal forces, show that the lesson of the Crimean campaign has been
studied in the United States; and this is an encouragement to afford
further illustrations of the case, when new material is at command.

I am thinking most of the volunteer forces at this moment, for the
obvious reason that their health is in greater danger than that of the
professional soldier. The regular troops live under a system which is
always at work to feed, clothe, lodge, and entertain them: whereas
the volunteers are quitting one mode of life for another, all the
circumstances of which had to be created at the shortest notice. To them
their first campaign must be very like what it was to British soldiers
who had never seen war to be sent to Turkey first, and then to the
Crimea, to live a new kind of life, and meet discomforts and dangers
which they had never dreamed of. I shall therefore select my details
with a view to the volunteers and their friends in the first place.

The enthusiasm which started the volunteers of every Northern State on
their new path of duty could hardly exceed that by which the British
troops were escorted from their barrack-gates to the margin of the sea.
The war was universally approved (except by a clique of peace-men); and
there was a universal confidence that the troops would do their duty
well, though not one man in a thousand of them had ever seen war. As
they marched down to their ships, in the best mood, and with every
appearance of health and spirit, nobody formed any conception of what