520
,VRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 184,7
effective troops; and when all was done, they returned to the walks of civil and social life, with the proudest of all rewards- the respect and gratitude of their fellow-citizens. It was not so with regulars, whose ties to society were rent asunder, and who were cut off from the associations of private life. When the volunteer returned to his home, he ceased to be a mere consumer. }i:e returned to be a producer, not a consumer. Ceasing to be a citizen-soldier, he had become a citizen producer. He had thrown off his character as a soldier, and become a citizen and a man. In making these remarks he had no intention to cast any re- flection on the regular army. It had engaged his earliest admiration, and his earliest habits were connected with it. Every association of his youth had been in the regular army. He had known men who held high rank in the army, and he had known soldier.s in their ranks. He had become well acquainted with their feelings. He had known many officers of great worth, both as gentlemen and as officers, and if they returned to the walks of private life, he would estimate them as highly as any citizen. He had nothing, therefore, to say-he intended to say nothing, derogatory to the regular army. The aim of his argument was against the supporting of regular troops in preference to volunteers, and to their exclusion. And he took his view, because a regular standing army was less in accordance with the genius of our institutions, and with our character as a free people. It was our trµe policy to cherish every germ of patriotism in the country, and not, after it had shot forth, and become vigorous, and grown to maturity, to lop off the branches and leave the trunk naked and desolate. Would it be wise or just to say to the volunteers when they came forward with a tender of their serv- ices, "Your offers are repelled, and you most be driven back to civil life. Your generous ardor we are bound to repress, because we cannot rely upon you with arms in your hands, as we can upon the regular troops. We are, therefore, obliged to throw you aside, and to take regulars. If you come at all, you must be subjected to serever restrictions and hard privations. You shall have officers to command you whom you would never have elected; men of whom you have no knowledge, and who have no sympathies in common with yours, and to these you must yield implicit obedience." This would not be giving any encouragement to that spirit of patriotism and self-devotion in the country to which we must look
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