Edgefield Advertiser

MILITIA TRAINING.—Our South Carolina apostle of temperance, the Hon. Judge O'Neall, in writing to the Temperance Standard, expresses the following opinion of the prevalent militia system.

"Before I go further, I trust that I may, without offence to the powers that be, be indulged in a remark or two in reference to militia training. Some yet remain who will remember that I passed fourteen years of the prime of my life in every grade (except that of major) from captain to major general in the militia service. My experience then, and my observation since, confirms me in the belief that musters are useless, and worse than useless. No one ever heard of any one being properly trained by militia musters. But I mainly object to the system on account of drunkenness, blasphemy, and fighting to which it gives birth. The late reviews in this district, if I am rightly informed, have been signally marked in these respects. At one of them, I understood that a temperance man was so abused by one of the whiskey-loving men, that at last his ancestral Irish blood could not bear it, and he thrashed the man of the spirit land to his heart's content. So mote it be."