June 21, another resolution, national in its bearing, restored the former premium of $2 to any citizen or soldier who should present an acceptable recruit at any rendezvous for the Regular Army.

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It has already been stated as an important objection to the State tem, that volunteer officers and soldiers might expose themselves and perform deeds of valor for their country, but could not receive the reward of promotion except through the governors of their States.

Another resolution of July 12, provided a reward for enlisted men of the army and volunteers in the shape of "medals of honor." The first part of the resolution read:

That the President of the United States be, and he is hereby, authorized to cause two thousand "medals of honor" to be prepared, with suitable emblematic devices, and to direct that the same be presented, in the name of Congress, to such noncommissioned officers and privates as shall most distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action and other soldier-like qualities during the present insurrection. * * * The sum of $10,000 was appropriated to carry the resolution into effect.

Save the one law authorizing the President to seize the railroads and telegraphs, the military legislation of 1862, as compared with that of 1861, shows little or no increase of wisdom. Congress had not yet discovered the value of military training. It exercised the power to support armies, but the power to raise them it conferred on the governors. To its mind the volunteer and State systems meant one and the same thing. The idea still prevailed that the Union could be saved by the voluntary service of its citizens. Patriotism, notwithstanding the lesson of Bull Run, was esteemed above discipline. There was no need of careful instruction. The war would soon be over; and strong in this delusion the views of Congress, more than a year after the fall of Fort Sumter, found expression in a law which, could the President have executed it, would again have intrusted the destiny of the nation to raw troops raised by the States for the brief periods of nine and twelve months.

TROOPS RAISED IN 1862.

Before taking the field in 1862, the Army of 1861, by disease, death, discharge, detached service, and desertion, had been reduced in effective strength to about one-half or two-thirds. Its recruitment, too, had been unfortunately stopped by the order of April 3, which nearly put an end to individual volunteering. The patriotic governors, who, through the system of State and General Hospitals, had been the blind instruments of promoting absenteeism and desertion, were the first to propose a call for more troops. In a joint letter dated the 28th of June, they wrote the President:

* * * We respectfully request, if it meets with your entire approval, that you at once call upon the several States for such number of men as may be required to fill up all military organizations now in the field, and add to the armies heretofore organized such additional number of men as may, in your judgment, be necessary to garrison and hold all of the numerous cities and military positions that have been captured by our armies. All believe that the decisive moment is near at

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hand, and to that end the people of the United States are desirous to aid promptly in furnishing all reenforcements that you may deem needful to sustain our Government.b

"Callan's Military Laws, p. 540.

Report of the Provost-Marshal-General, vol. 2, p. 103.

July 1, the President replied:

Fully concurring in the wisdom of the views expressed to me in so patriotic a manner by you, in the commuication of the 28th day of June, I have decided to call into the service an additional force of 300,000 men. I suggest and recommend that the troops should be chiefly of infantry, a

There was not a defect or inconsistency in our military system which the critical year of 1862 did not fully disclose.

So far as the danger to liberty was concerned, the President was vested with all the authority of a despot. He could suspend the writ of habeas corpus, could bring citizens to trial before military commissions and courts-martial, or, declining to give a reason, could shut them up within the walls of a fortress till he saw fit to release them.

While a state of war, under the Constitution, gave the President this power over the personal liberty of the citizens, the law gave him no power to place a citizen in the ranks of the Army. This inconsistency was revealed by the response to the call for 300,000 volunteers. The proposition of the governors was first to call upon the States for such numbers of men as might be necessary to fill up all military organizations in the field, and then "add to the armies heretofore organized such additional number of men" as in the judgment of the President might be necessary. The President, too, probably recognizing the worthlessness of untrained cavalry, recommended "that the troops should be chiefly of infantry."

But the President was not master of the situation. He had been committed by the laws to the voluntary system, based on the cooperation of the States, and was bound to stand by it until it should be abandoned or involve the Government in ruin.

The liberty of the citizen was in the hands of the President, but the destiny of the nation for the time being was in the hands of the citizen. Naturally averse to military restraint a feeling common to all men and too often mistaken for devotion to liberty-the citizen in 1862 could see little or no distinction between the Regular and Volunteer Armies then in the field. He did not stop to think that their officers knew how to lead them to battle and to care for the food and health of their men. Reports spread by deserters had made the discipline of both appear obnoxious, and to enlist in either, although recruiting parties had been sent back to their States, was scarcely to be thought of. The former system, therefore, had again to be revived. The old regiments were left to depletion, the governors again granted commissions for recruiting, and, with a success unparalleled in history, a second patriotic army sprang into existence, numbering 421,465 men. In competition with the new regiments, the total number of men procured for the old regiments from the date of the above call till the 1st of December was 49,990."

In the organization of the new regiments we have an additional proof that so long as governors are permitted to issue commissions to volunteers, military merit can never be rewarded. Every State had then in the field hundreds of officers who were qualified by experience to command the new troops, but who were necessarily absent from their States; and no longer exerting political influence at home, their chances for promotion were no better than so many officers of the Reg

a Report of the Provost-Marshal-General, vol. 2, p. 103.
Report of the Secretary of War, December 1, 1862.

ular Army. Worse than denying them promotion, those who remained faithfully at their posts had the mortification of seeing many worthless officers, who had been dismissed or compelled to resign, come back to the field with increased rank and command.

At this period of the war, no governor could afford to be unpatriotic. The State system of raising troops was a subsidy, not to the people but to their governors. Magnified in their positions, contrary to the express provisions of the Constitution, every facility was granted them for extending their personal and political influence. Besides the military patronage, which deprived the Government of the means of rewarding deeds of valor, they were given also the keys of the national Treasury. Until mustered into service, their power over the new regiments was absolute. General Orders, No. 75, of July 8, issued by the Secretary of War, without quoting the authority of the President, forbade officers to be mustered into the service except "on the authority of the governor of the State to which their regiments belong."

The transportation of all persons traveling under the orders of a governor on business connected with recruiting, was paid by the Government on presentation of the proper vouchers.

The third paragraph of the order began—

Until regiments are organized and their muster rolls completed, they will be under the exclusive control of the governors of the States.

The same paragraph made every contract entered into by the State agents for the subsistence of the troops valid, and directed that they be allowed on condition of being approved by the governors. They could also furnish quartermaster, medical, and ordnance stores, but if not convenient to do this, the fourth paragraph of the order provided:

Where it is desired by the governors of States, the United States officers of the Quartermaster, Medical, and Ordnance Departments may turn over stores to the State authorities, to be issued by them in accordance with the regulations, and accounted for to the proper bureau of the War Department.

The new army raised in this extravagant manner, while the depletion of the veteran regiments was suffered to continue, was organized into 346 regiments of infantry, 44 regiments of cavalry, 12 regiments of heavy artillery, 24 independent companies of infantry, 1 battalion of heavy artillery, and 57 batteries of light artillery.

The attentive reader will not fail to observe that the Government was not merely a slave to the volunteer system in permitting the organization of new regiments. The men enforced a choice in reference to the arms of service. In the Army of 1861 there were 82 regiments of cavalry, which, fully recruited and mounted, would have exceeded 98,000. Notwithstanding this fact, so difficult was it to get horses, that less than five hundred men were fit for effective service during the campaign of the Second Bull Run. It was also reported that in many companies there were not more than five horses which could be got out of a walk. Other nations had proved to their own satisfaction that to make good cavalry required from two to five years, but we did not seek to profit from their experience or even our own.

The Government could not afford to decline any species of troops, and hence when the governors reported that they had raised 44 regiments of cavalry, aggregating in the maximum more than 50,000, it could do nothing less than accept them.

While the failure to recruit the old army and the creation of the new one, scarcely increased the military strength of the Union, a glance

at the composition of the two armies will show how rapidly the Government was hastening toward bankruptcy. Both fortunately enlisted for three years. They aggregated, exclusive of independent battalions, batteries, and companies, 906 regiments of infantry, 126 regiments of cavalry, and 27 regiments of light and heavy artillery.

The number of independent batteries of light artillery in the two armies was 186, equivalent to 15 regiments of 12 batteries each.

Our boasted economy in time of peace vanishes in contemplating the military establishment of 1862. Casting aside the Regular Army, the infantry of the volunteer forces exceeded the present Russian Field Army on a war footing by 237 battalions. The cavalry, the vast majority of which was useless till 1863, exceeded the total field, depot, and reserve cavalry of the Russian Regular Army by 965 squadrons.

The infantry of the regular field army of the Russian Empire on a war footing numbers 669 battalions; including all the reserve and depot troops it numbers 1,036 battalions. The cavalry, including the reserve and depot cavalry, numbers 547 squadrons, of 128 men each."

The 126 regiments of volunteer cavalry numbered 1,512 companies, with a maximum organization of 104 officers and men each a force which could it have been fully equipped would have been nearly three times as great as that maintained by any government in Europe.

The chief service rendered by the Army of 1862 was to enable the veteran troops to recover the ground so needlessly lost at the beginning of the campaign.

Called out too late to actively participate, except in the closing battles of the year (Fredericksburg and Murfreesboro), the Government, in consequence of the ignorance and inexperience of the new officers, was compelled to maintain a second army in a state of training for the period of eight months.

The creation of this army only increased the demand for more men. Instead of coming from 600 regiments, requisitions for recruits now came from more than a thousand, and to these requisitions the War Department was powerless to respond.

In the meantime depletion had been reduced to a system. The Surgeon-General, independent of military commanders, was powerless in the hands of the governors. It mattered not where a General Hospital was located, the moment a soldier stepped within its inclosure an agent stood ready to spirit him away, first to his State and then to his home. Thus contented to take what the governors would offer, and give back all they asked, the Government drifted to the vortex of a maelstrom which--though the Government itself might escape-was destined to engulf the entire military and financial resources of the people. While this result might have been predicted by any student of the Revolution and the War of 1812, both the Cabinet and Congress preserved their faith in a confederate policy.

The call for the 300,000 volunteers for three years was issued, as we have seen, on the 2d of July, but Congress, preferring short enlist-. ments, passed two weeks later the law of July 17, encouraging the President to fall back on the militia and volunteers for the term of nine months. The authority for the volunteers the President did not use, but responding to the sense of Congress he made another effort to save the Union through the aid of the States.

@Almanach di Gotha, 1879, p. 820.

August 4, but five days before the advance guard of the Confederate Army, on its way to Manassas, appeared at Cedar Mountain, the President ordered

that a draft of 300,000 militia be immediately called into the service of the United States, to serve for nine months, unless sooner discharged. a

The duty of assigning quotas and establishing regulations for the draft was devolved upon the Secretary of War. The second paragraph of the order directed that in case any State should fail to furnish its quota of the 300,000 volunteers by the 15th of August, the deficiency should be made up by a special draft from the militia. While Congress itself in several of its laws during the Rebellion did not recognize the volunteers as militia, thereby implying that the governors had no constitutional right to appoint their officers, it cannot be denied that the appointment of the officers of militia is expressly reserved to the States.

It is also well known that, completely subversive of discipline, the militia as voluntary organizations in each State are permitted the privilege of electing their officers-a privilege which was accorded to the volunteers in the law of July 22, 1861, but repealed by the law of August 6, 1861.

In both cases, however, the commission was issued by the governors. With these facts apparent, and the further knowledge that the governors, by the last two calls, had just been granted the authority to issue commissions to armies aggregating 600,000 men, the last paragraph of the President's order relating to rewards for distinguished services might better have been omitted. Utterly powerless to enforce it, the paragraph read:

Regulations will be prepared by the War Department, and presented to the President, with the object of securing the promotion of officers of the Army and Volunteers for meritorious and distinguished services, and of preventing the nomination or appointment in the military service of incompetent or unworthy officers. The regulations will also provide for ridding the service of such incompetent persons as now hold commissions in it."

It will be remembered that, on the plea of economy, the President and Cabinet in 1814 declined to establish a military camp, and also refused to permit the commander to call out the militia until a few days before the destruction of the capital, when out of 15,000 called for, but 1,800 responded.'

In returning substantially to the same policy, the futile efforts to enforce a draft for 300,000 militia in 1862, when the main Confederate Army was again marching upon Washington, demands that all the difficulties in the way be fully considered.

@ Report of the Provost-Marshal-General, vol. 2, p. 104.

As the approach of the British forces was heralded the President called a Cabinet council on July 1, and it was agreed to form a great military camp for the protection of Washington, to consist of two or three thousand regular troops and 10,000 militia. Actually the President issued a call for 93,000 militia from the several States, most of whom were permitted to remain at their homes, subject to call in case of emergency. In official orders there appeared to be a force of 15,000 militia for the defense of Washington, but on the 1st of August, General Winder was compelled to report that he had only 1,000 regulars, and 4,000 militia enrolled for active service, a large part of the latter being still at their homes. On August 23, when mustered by the President, the so-called army for the defense of Washington consisted of 1,400 regulars (400 horse, 400 regular infantry, and 600 marines) and but 1,800 militia. Before the battle of Bladensburg this force was augmented by a brigade of militia from Baltimore.-EDITORS.