. The photographic history of the Civil War : in ten volumes . , Springfield couldnot begin to turn out the numbers needed; Rock Island Arse-nal was not yet built, and so in many a regiment, flank com-panies, only, received the rifle, the other eight using for monthsthe old smooth-bore with its buck-and-ball cartridge, goodfor something within two hundred yards and for nothingbeyond. Even of these there were enough for only the first fewregiments. Vast purchases, therefore, were made abroad,England selling us her Enfields, with which the fine Vermontbrigade was first armed, and France and Belg
. The photographic history of the Civil War : in ten volumes . , Springfield couldnot begin to turn out the numbers needed; Rock Island Arse-nal was not yet built, and so in many a regiment, flank com-panies, only, received the rifle, the other eight using for monthsthe old smooth-bore with its buck-and-ball cartridge, goodfor something within two hundred yards and for nothingbeyond. Even of these there were enough for only the first fewregiments. Vast purchases, therefore, were made abroad,England selling us her Enfields, with which the fine Vermontbrigade was first armed, and France and Belgium parting withthousands of the huge, brass-bound, ponderous carabines atige —the Belgian guns with a spike at the bottom to expandthe soft leaden bullet when rammed home. With thisarchaic blunderbus whole regiments were burdened, some for-eign-born volunteers receiving it eagerly as from the old coun-try, and therefore superior to anything of Yankee their confidence was short lived. One days march, one [82] I %i fii w, % i wm WM S/M^ ?:€M. TASTING THE SOUPA FORMALITY SOON ABANDONED One of the formalities soon abandoned after the soldiers took the field wasthat of tasting the soup. Here it appears as observed at the camp of the31st Pennsylvania near Washington, in 1861. This duty fell to one of theofficers of each company, and its object was to discover whether the soupwas sufficiently strong to pass muster with the men, but as the war went onthe men themselves became the only tasters. The officers had too manyother pressing duties to perform, and the handling of the soup, when there,was any, became the simple matter of ladling it out to men who wereonly too glad to fill up their cans and devour the contents. The hunting-horn on the hat of the man leaning on his gun just behind the officer be-tokens the infantry. It was a symbol adopted from European armies,where the hunter became by a natural process of evolution the orlight infantryman. In the Uni
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Keywords: ., bookauthormillerfrancistrevelya, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910
