The lives lost on the battle-field are not the only ones; militia, being unaccustomed to exposure, and unable to supply their own wants with certainty and regularity, contract diseases which occasion in every campaign a most frightful mortality.
There is also a vast difference in the cost of supporting regulars and militia forces.

The cost of a regular army of twenty thousand men for a campaign of six months, in this country, has been estimated, from data in the War-office, at a hundred and fifty dollars per man; while the cost of a militia force, under the same circumstances, making allowance for the difference in the expenses from sickness, waste of camp-furniture, equipments, &c., will be two hundred and fifty dollars per man.

But in short campaigns, and in irregular warfare, like the expedition against Black Hawk and his Indians in the Northwest, and during the hostilities in Florida, "the expenses of the militia," says Mr.Secretary Spencer, in a report to congress in 1842, "invariably exceed those of regulars by _at least three hundred per cent_." It is further stated that "_fifty-five thousand militia_ were called into service during the Black Hawk and Florida wars, and that _thirty millions of dollars have been expended in these conflicts_!" When it is remembered that during these border wars our whole regular army did not exceed twelve or thirteen thousand men, it will not be difficult to perceive why our military establishment was so enormously expensive.
Large sums were paid to sedentary militia who never rendered the slightest service.

Again, during our late war with Great Britain, of less than three years' duration, _two hundred and eighty thousand muskets were lost,_--the average cost of which is stated at twelve dollars,--making an aggregate loss, in muskets alone, _of three millions and three hundred and sixty thousand dollars_, during a service of about two years and a half;--resulting mainly from that neglect and waste of public property which almost invariably attends the movements of newly-raised and inexperienced forces.

Facts like these should awaken us to the necessity of reorganizing and disciplining our militia.