America has never been a war-seeking nation. Its one desire has been to "live and let live." When once aroused, however, it is the greatest fighting force on the face of the globe. It is in this peace-loving land that civilization witnessed the most terrible and heart-rending struggle that ever befell men of the same blood. "Men speaking the same language, living for eighty-four years under the same flag, stood as enemies in deadly combat. Brother fighting against brother; father against son; mothers praying for their boys--one in the uniform of blue, and the other wearing the gray; and churches of the same faith appealing to God, each for the other's overthrow."
There were 2,841,906 men and boys sworn into the defence of their country during the Civil War in the United States. The extreme youth of these patriots is one of the most remarkable records in the annals of the world's warfare. The average age of the soldier in the army and navy was about nineteen years. Some of them followed the marching armies on the impulse of the moment; most of them were enlisted with the consent of their parents or guardians. Thousands of them never returned home; thousands more came back to the pursuits of Peace and have contributed for nearly a half century to the Good Citizenship of the Republic. Today they are gray-haired patriarchs. One by one they are stepping from the ranks to answer the call to the Greater Army from which no soldier has ever returned. This record has been compiled for this volume from an authoritative source. The men who re-enlisted are counted twice as there is no practical way to estimate the number of individual persons:
682,117 were over 21 years of age; 1,159,789 were 21 years old and under; 1,151,438 were 18 years old and under; 844,891 were 17 years old and under; 231,051 were 16 years old and under; 104,987 were 15 years old and under; 1,523 were 14 years old and under; 300 were 13 years old and under; 278 were 12 years old and under.
When the Great Struggle began, the United States was the home of less than thirty-two millions of people. Today it has passed eighty millions and the peoples from all the nations of the earth are flooding into our open gates to the extent of more than a million a year. A new community of more than three thousand inhabitants could be founded every day from the men, women and children who disembark from the sea of ships charted to the American shores. There are among us today more than forty-eight millions who have been born here or immigrated into this country since the beginning of the Civil War. These people have no personal knowledge of it and their information is gathered from the narrations of others. These Brady negatives will come as a revelation to them and give a truer understanding of the meaning of it all. The good service they may do for the nation in this one respect cannot be overestimated.