The duties incident to picketing and outpost stations are so important that several works by distinguished authors have been written concerning them, but most of the rules are of too technical a character for recital in these papers. The friends of soldiers will, however, take interest in some general statements. The picket line consists of three portionsfirst, the stations of the main guard; second, some distance in advance of these, the picket stations; and third, some two hundred yards in advance of these, the stations of the sentinels. If the country is open and hilly, the latter need not be posted closely together, but in a wooded country they must be quite numerous. It is their duty not to allow any person to pass their line; and if a force of the enemy, too strong to be resisted, approaches, they fall back on the pickets. These should be stationed where they can command the main avenues of approach, and offer resistance to the advanced parties of the enemy. After such resistance becomes useless, the various pickets fall back on the grand guard, which offers a more determined contest. The advance of the enemy should by these means have been delayed for a couple of hours, affording time for the troops to get under arms and take the order of battle.
The following diagram exhibits the general arrangement of picketing:
Let the line A B represent a chain of sentinels on a mile of picket front, C D a line of picket stations, and E the grand guard. The whole force of men may perhaps be three hundred, of whom two thirds will remain at E, posted advantageously upon some eminence protected in part by a stream and commanding an open country. The remaining one hundred will be distributed among the picket stations and thrown forward as sentinels. The whole arrangement is supervised by an officer of rankusually a colonel. With a disposition like the above in front of every division in an army, it is obviously impossible for any considerable force of an enemy to approach without detection.
One of the greatest practical difficulties our armies have experienced has been connected with the system of picketing. The South having been greatly impoverished in those portions traversed by the contending armies, and the people entirely destitute of luxuries, there are innumerable applications from residents outside of the pickets for admission within the lines, in order to trade with officers, for the purpose of procuring in return articles from our well-supplied commissariat. Various other necessities of the people appeal for a modified degree of rigor in regard to picket arrangements, so that our armies are never free from the presence of rebel inhabitants, traversing them in all directions. Perfectly familiar with the country, they are able to detect any weakly guarded places, and undoubtedly, in frequent instances, after receiving the kindest treatment, return to their homes conveying such information to guerillas as enables these prowlers to penetrate through by-roads and seize animals and straggling soldiers. As a precaution against such annoyances, a very judicious arrangement was made last winter by the provost marshal general of the Army of the Potomac. He established certain points on the picket line at which traffic might be conducted, and forbade admission to citizens. Some rigorous system like this is very necessary.
The social life of camps is, however, the topic of chief interest. The question is often asked, Is the life of a soldier demoralizing? The answer must be, 'Yes,' but not for the reasons generally supposed. The opportunities for vice and dissoluteness are really less than at home. The hundred thousand men in an army use less liquor than the same number of men in a city. In fact, liquor is nearly inaccessible to the soldier when on the march. For other kinds of vice the temptations are few. The demoralization arises from the terrible monotony of a prolonged camp, which produces listlessness, indolence, and a devotion to small amusements; deranges and reverses the whole system of active life, as it is seen at home; renders a man uncouth; disqualifies soldiers for anything else than the trade of war. To the officer in his tent and to the soldier in his log hut, while the cold rains are beating without, and the ground is knee deep with mud, there is a constant temptation to find amusement in cards. Gambling thus becomes a pastime too generally adopted. The books sent to the army are not always of the character best adapted to the circumstances. Moral essays and tracts will not be very eagerly sought for by men whose principal object is to kill time. The reading matter needed is the kind afforded by the periodicals of the day, unobjectionable novels, biographies, works of travel, etc.
Camp life has, however, its pleasures, and it must not be supposed that all succumb to its enervating influences, or that any great number yield themselves entirely to its demoralizing effects. The period of military service among our volunteers is too short to permit its full influence to be experienced, and the connections of our soldiers with their homes too intimate to allow them to subside completely into the routine veterans, whose social, mental, and moral nature is altogether lost and absorbed in the new and artificial military nature imposed on them.
War collects many characters of peculiar idiosyncrasies, and jumbles them strangely together, so that curious associations are produced. In any collection of men upon a staff or in a regiment, gathered from different localities, will be found characters of the most opposite and incongruous elements. There will be the youth who has never before travelled beyond his own village, and is full of small anecdotes of the persons who have figured in his little world; and the silent and reserved man of middle age, who, if he can be induced to talk, can tell of many a wild scene in all quarters of the world in which he has been a participant, since he stealthily left his native home, a boy of sixteen. There are men who have passed through all the hardships of life, who have been soldiers in half a dozen European armies, or miners in California and Australia, or sailors; and men who have always had wealth at their disposal, and spent years in foreign travel, viewing the world only under its sunniest aspects. There are many officers grown gray while filling subordinate capacities at posts on the Western prairies and mountains, who can relate many interesting anecdotes of their companionsthe men now prominent in military affairs; and there are officers of high rank, recently emerged from civil life, who nourish prodigiously in self-glorification upon their brief warlike experience. There are brave men, and men whose courage is suspected; quiet men, and men of opinionated perversity; quick-witted men, and men whose profound stupidity makes them continual butts for all kinds of practical jokes; refined, educated, poetical men, and men of boorish habits. In short, any camp presents such specimens of humanity as would be furnished if all the ingredients of character and experience that compose the world had been collected in a huge pepper box and sprinkled miscellaneously throughout the army.
In such associations there are of course many occasions for extracting interesting and comical conversation and incident. Jokes of all kinds are constantly on the wing, and no one can consider himself safe from collision with them. Ridiculous nicknames become attachedno one knows howto the most dignified characters, and altogether usurp the places of the genuine cognomens. No person possesses the art of concealment to such a degree that all his foibles and weaknesses will escape observation in the companionship of a camp; and when discovered, the treatment of them is merciless just in proportion to the care with which they had been hidden. All pretensions will be penetrated, all disguises unmasked. Every man finds himself placed according to his exact status, no matter how well contrived his arrangements for passing himself off for more than his par value. Many an officer, whom the newspapers delight to praise, because he is over courteous to correspondents, and takes precautions to have all his achievements published, has a camp reputation far different from that by which he is known to the public.
Opinions of all kinds flourish in the army as vigorously as in the outer world. There are ardent theorists of the progressive order, full of schemes for radical reforms, and old fogies believing in nothing except what they lament to see is fast becoming obsolete. There are students and practical men, authors and mechanics, editors, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, school teachers, actors, artists, singers, and representatives of all kinds of trades and avocations. All are now on the same platform, and, for a time, class distinctions disappear beneath the assimilating conditions of the new profession. Political strifes occur, but are rarely virulent. Generally the association together of men holding different political views, in a common cause, and subject to the same dangers, is tacitly accepted as the occasion for an armistice. But politics of all kinds are represented. There are of course Abolitionists, Republicans, Unionists, and War Democrats; but, strangely enough, there are also Copperheads, Peace Democrats, peace-at-any-price men, and even secession sympathizers. Why extremists of the latter classes should have joined the army voluntarily cannot be surmised; but there they are, and, moreover, they do their duty. There are some traits of original manhood so strong that even the poison of treasonable politics cannot overcome them.
The daily routine of camp life in a regiment can be told in a few words. The plan of a regimental camp as laid down in the army regulations is generally conformed to, with some variations recommended by the character of the camping ground. The following diagram exhibits the plan:
REFERENCE
In our armies the full allowances of camp equipage are not permitted. Field and staff officers have only three wall tents, and company officers only the same shelter tents as the men. The trains very rarely encamp with the regiments. The tents of the men front on streets from fifteen to twenty feet wide, each company having a street of its own, and there is much competition as to the adornment of these. Many regimental camps are decorated with evergreens in an exceedingly tasteful mannerparticularly during warm weatherchapels, arches, colonnades, etc., being constructed of rude frameworks, so interwoven with pine boughs that they present a very elegant appearance.
The daily life of a camp is as follows: At an hour appointed by orders, varying according to the season of the year, the camp is roused by the reveille. The old notion that soldiers should be waked before daybreak in all seasons and all weathers has fortunately been exploded, and the reveille is not generally sounded in winter till six o'clock. In pleasant weather the men are formed upon the color line, where they stack their arms. Breakfast is the next matter in order: after that the mounting of the guard for the day and the detail of detachments for picket and other duties. The prisoners are put to work in cleaning up the camp, and squad drills occupy the morning. About noon the dinner call is sounded; then come more drills and in the latter part of the afternoon the dress parade of the regiment. This closes the military labors of the day. In the evening there are schools for instructions in tactics, and the time is passed in any amusements that may offer themselves. About half past eight the tattoo is beaten, when every one, not absent on duty, must be in camp ready to answer to his name; and shortly after, the beat of taps proclaims that the military day is ended, and lights must be extinguisheda regulation not very strictly enforced. Thus pass the days of camp life.
Very different are those assemblages of huts down among the pine forests of Virginia from the pleasant villages, the thriving towns, and the prosperous cities of the Northvery different the life of the soldier from that which he enjoyed before rebellion sought to sever the country which from his cradle he had been taught to consider 'one and inseparable.'
APHORISMS.NO. XIV
A Query for the Thoughtful.May we not justly say that spirit, everywhere, in its various degrees, rules over matter, setting its forces at defiance for the time, and yet never interfering with their continued operations?
This seems a great law of the universe. The power of life, wherever guided by will, whether in beast or man, or even where we can only venture to speak of instinct, thus asserts its superiority. Within its appointed range, the laws of the material world are evidently subject to its control. Iron may be firmly held together by the attraction of cohesion: but man wills its severance, and it is effected.
Nor does it contravene the general assertion here made, that we act by opposing one natural force to another. The rising of the sledge hammer, to fall with a force more than its own, is just as much against the laws of matter as the breaking of the iron beneath its blows.
All power, so far as we can judge, is spirituali.e., originates in spirit, and is exerted in obedience to will, or to something equivalent.
Nor, again, will it avail an objector to say that spirit is also under law as well as matter. The laws of the one sphere, at all events, are not those of the other. They may have their relations, but they are not those of equality. Spirit is sovereignmatter subject; or, if in any case it should be otherwise, it is from some weak refusal of the spirit to assert its own power.
ÆNONE:
A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME
CHAPTER XVI
Gliding softly beneath the shrubbery, and beneath one of the side colonnades, Leta gained the house unperceived, passing Sergius, who loitered where she had been sitting, upon the coping of the fountain basin. His friends had departed, bearing away with them his gold and much else that was of value; and he, with the consciousness of evil besetting him on every side, had morbidly wandered out to try if in the cool air he could compose his thoughts to sobriety. As he sat rocking to and fro, and humming to himself broken snatches of song, Leta stood under one of the arches of the court, glowering at him, and half hoping that he would lose his balance and fall into the water behind. It was not deep enough to drown him, but if it had been, she felt in no mood to rescue him. In a few moments, however, the fresh breeze, partially dissipating the fumes of the wine which he had drunk, somewhat revived him; making him more clearly conscious of his misfortunes, indeed, but engendering in him, for the instant, a new and calmer state of feeling, which was not sobriety, but which differed from either his former careless recklessness or maddening ferocity. And in this new phase of mind, he sat and revolved and re-revolved, in ever-recurring sequence, the things that had befallen him, and his changed position in the world.
Alone now, for she, Ænone, had left him. Left him for a stripling of a slavea mere creature from the public market. What was the loss of gold and jewels and quarries to this! And how could he ever hold up his head again, with this heavy shame upon it! For there could be no doubt;alas! no. Had he not seen her press a kiss upon the slave's forehead? Had she not tenderly raised the menial's head upon her knee with caressing pity? And, throughout all, had she attempted one word of justification? Yes, alone in the world now, with no one to love or care for him! For she must be put away from him forever; she must never call him husband more. That was a certain thing. But yetand a kindly gleam came into his face for the momenteven though guilty, she might not be thoroughly and utterly corrupt. If he could, at least, believe that she had been sorely temptedif he could only, for the sake of past memories, learn to pity her, rather than to hate! And this became now the tenor of his thoughts. In his deep reflection of a few hours before, he had tried to believe that she was innocent. Now, circumstances of suspicion had so overwhelmed her, that he could not think her innocent; but he could have wished to believe her less guilty, and thereby have cherished a kindly feeling toward her.