IN THE FLAG-BEARER N no war since the close of the great Napoleonic struggles has the fighting been so obstinate and bloody as in the Civil War. Much has been said in song and story of the resolute courage of the Guards at Inkerman, of the charge of the Light Brigade, and of the terrible fighting and loss of the German armies at Mars La Tour and Gravelotte. The praise bestowed upon the British and Germans for their valor, and for the loss that proved their valor, was well deserved; but there were over one hundred and twenty regiments, Union and Confederate, each of which, in some one battle of the Civil War, suffered a greater loss than any English regiment at Inkerman or at any other battle in the Crimea, a greater loss than was suffered by any German regiment at Gravelotte or at any other battle of the Franco-Prussian war. No European regiment in any recent struggle has suffered such losses as at Gettysburg befell the Ist Minnesota, when 82 per cent. of the officers and men were killed and wounded; or th Pennsylvania, which lost 76 per cent.; or t North Carolina, which lost 72 per cent.; su the second battle of Manassas befell th New York, which lost 74 per cent., and t Georgia, which lost 76 per cent. the 25th Massachusetts lost 70 per cent., a 1 Oth Tennessee at Chickamauga 68 per while at Shiloh the 9th Illinois lost 63 per and the 6th Mississippi 70 per cent.; and tietam the 1st Texas lost 82 per cent. The the Light Brigade in killed and wounded in mous charge at Balaklava was but 37 per These figures show the terrible punishme dured by these regiments, chosen at random the head of the list which shows the slaughte of the Civil War. Yet the shattered remna each regiment preserved their organization many of the severest losses were incurred i hour of triumph, and not of disaster. Thus, th Minnesota, at Gettysburg, suffered its appa loss while charging a greatly superior force, w it drove before it; and the little huddle of wou and unwounded r charge actually kept both the flag they had tured and the ground from which they had dr fighting and endured heavy punishment. Several of the regiments raised on the northern frontier in 1814 showed, under Brown and Scott, that they were able to meet the best troops of Britain on equal terms in the open, and even to overmatch them in fair fight with the bayonet. The regiments which, in the Mexican war, under the lead of Taylor, captured Monterey, and beat back Santa Anna at Buena Vista, or which, with Scott as commander, stormed Molino Del Rey and Chapultepec, proved their ability to bear terrible loss, to wrest victory from overwhelming numbers, and to carry by open assault positions of formidable strength held by a veteran army. But in none of these three wars was the fighting so resolute and bloody as in the Civil War. Countless deeds of heroism were performed by Northerner and by Southerner, by officer and by private, in every year of the great struggle. The immense majority of these deeds went unrecorded, and were known to few beyond the immediate participants. Of those that were noticed it would be impossible even to make a dry catalogue in ten such volumes as this. All that can be done is to choose out two or three acts of heroism, not as exceptions, but as examples of hundreds of others. The times of war are iron times, and bring out all that is best as well as all that is basest in the human heart. In a full recital of the civil war, as |