with the provision that these general officers might be selected from the line or staff of the Regular Army.

The latter part of the same section gave to the governors of States the right to appoint all the regimental, staff, and company officers, with the proviso that when State authorities should refuse to furnish volunteers the officers of such as might offer their services should be commissioned by the President.

It will thus be seen that, as by the first sections of the two laws the President might have ruined our cause by calling out men by the million or half million for the term of six or twelve months, so, by the fourth section, he and the governors together were given the power to send our vast armies into the field without a single officer of military education and experience to lead them. In no monarchy or despotism of the Old World do the laws give to the ruler such power to do evil.

But the fourth section of the first law was prolific of other causes for protracting the war; it was based on the theory of confederation; the troops were to be State, and not national, and as a consequence, the officers were to be commissioned by the governors and not by the President. Such a system could not but be fatal to the hope of promotion, which in all countries and ages, has been one of the most powerful incentives to valor. Officers and soldiers might fight and die for their country, but with the exception of a medal or an empty brevet, they could expect no reward save from the governors of their States.

The policy of giving governors the authority to commission the offi cers, may have been suggested by the belief that this bestowal of patronage was essential to the speedy organization of the troops; but there are strong indications that it was dictated by mistaken ideas in reference to States rights. Many of the Senators and Representatives held that the volunteers were militia, or State troops, whose officers under the Constitution could only be appointed by the Executive of their States."

This presumption is strengthened by the following resolution, which was passed July 27:

That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, directed, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to pay to the governor of any State, or to his duly authorized agents, the costs, charges, and expenses properly incurred by such State for enrolling, subsisting, supplying, arming, equipping, paying, and transporting its troops employed in aiding to suppress the present insurrection against the United States, to be settled upon proper vouchers, to be filed and passed upon by the proper accounting officers of the Treasury, b

This resolution was based on a similar one approved the 3d of March, 1847, with this difference, that the expression "transporting volunteers previous to their being mustered and received into the service of the United States during the present (Mexican) war," when compared with the expression "transporting its troops employed in aiding to

a Under the most recent legislation affecting the organization of volunteer regiments (act of Congress approved January 21, 1903), it is prescribed that all volunteer forces of the United States, called for by authority of Congress, shall be organized in the manner prescribed by the act of Congress approved April 22, 1898. Under the later act all regimental and company officers, are appointed by the governors of States. Thus, under existing laws, the system of appointing officers of volunteers, so severely denounced by the author, is still a part of our military system.-EDITORS. Callan's Military Laws of the United States, sec. 3, p. 472.

suppress the present insurrection against the United States," would seem to indicate, that in one case Congress considered the volunteers United States troops, whereas, in the other, it regarded them as "State troops" in the service of the United States.

But the resolution must not be looked upon simply in its relation to States rights; it will be observed that it sanctioned all of the extravagance of the military system under the Confederation, by permitting each State to send, subsist, clothe, supply, arm, equip, and transport its troops, the bills to be made out by the agents of the States and paid by the United States. This irresponsible system was abandoned the moment volunteering gave place to the draft. The provision in the fifth section of the first law that the noncommissioned officers and privates should furnish their own horses and equipments, receiving for the use thereof 40 cents per day, was soon found to be both impracticable and extravagant and was therefore abandoned.

The tenth section incorporated the worst vice known in the military system of any of the States. Ignoring the value of discipline, it tempted every ambitious officer and soldier to play the demagogue, by prescribing that field officers should be elected by company officers, the latter in turn to be elected by the men. The taxpayers were the first to remonstrate against the folly of this principle. In a memorial to the President, published in the morning papers August 1, 1861, the "property holders of New York" complain: "That a suitable supervision has not been extended by Government to the officering of the volunteer forces; that the principle of allowing companies to choose their own officers, or officers their own colonels, is fatal to military discipline; that political, local, and personal interests have had far too much sway in the selection of officers; that undue laxity prevails in the control of volunteer officers by their military superiors, and that an ill-grounded apprehension of local or political censure has prevented the proper authorities from removing incompetent commanders and from placing in responsible military positions those most capable of filling them without regard to anything but their qualifications," etc."

A practice so repugnant to reason could not long survive. Accordingly on the 5th of August when the bill to promote the efficiency of the Engineer and Topographical Engineer Corps came up in the Senate, Mr. Wilson proposed:

That vacancies hereafter occurring among the commissioned officers of the vo unteer regiments shall be filled by the governors of the States, respectively, in the same manner as original appointments, and so much of the tenth section of the act approved July 22, 1861, as is inconsistent herewith, be, and the same is, hereby repealed.b

The amendment was adopted by both houses as section 3 of the above act, which was approved the next day, not, however, until more than a quarter of a million men had been accepted, either under the President's proclamation or the organic acts of July 22 and 25.

It must not be inferred that Congress was unmindful of the kind of officers such a system would produce, for, as has been seen, the same section which sanctioned election gave to every general commanding a separate department or a detached army, authority to appoint military boards or commissions to examine the "capacity, qualifications, propriety of conduct, and efficiency of any officer of volunteers" reported deficient in the above particulars.

a Swinton's The Army of the Potomac, p. 63.

b Callan's Military Laws of the United States, sec. 3, p. 488.

If the report of the board was adverse, its approval by the President vacated the officer's commission. Under the operations of this provision 310 officers were dismissed or their resignations accepted within eight months.

Without dwelling further upon the organic acts of July 22 and 25, the magnitude of whose defects can only be appreciated by results yet to be stated, let us pass on to the act of July 29, increasing the Regular Army. Adopting the decision of the Secretary of the Treasury, each regiment of infantry and cavalry was organized into not more than three battalions, but with no provision for regimental depots or territorial recruitment. Economy was also sought to be practiced by prescribing that all the adjutants and quartermasters should be detailed from the subalterns of their respective regiments or battalions. In this manner, by legislative enactment, eight companies in each regiment, before going into battle, were shorn of one-third of their commissioned officers. Fortunately, this evil of detached service was not inflicted upon the regiments of volunteers whose adjutants and quartermasters were extra lieutenants.

It having proved impracticable to recruit the regular regiments, particularly the infantry, in competition with the volunteers, the section of the above law, worthy of the closest attention, was the last or the eighth. In recognition of the value of professional training, it prescribed that the recruitment of the new regular regiments should be conducted by the officers appointed from civil life, and that pending the recruitment the officers appointed from the Regular Army should be detailed by the commanding general to such service in the volunteer regiments then in the field as, in his judgment, might give to them the greatest military instruction and efficiency, or be employed with any part of the regular forces also in the field.

The last and most important clause of the section gave the commanding general authority to detail any officers of the Regular Army for service with the volunteers with such work as might be offered in volunteer regiments, again repeating the phrase "for the purpose of imparting to them military instruction and efficiency."

At the time Congress indicated the desire that trained officers should be employed in positions of the greatest usefulness, it had at its disposal more than 600 captains and lieutenants who would have made able and efficient colonels. Yet by giving to governors the authority to appoint officers, without reserving to the President the right to designate at least one field officer in each regiment, Congress not only thwarted its own intentions, but needlessly jeopardized the national success. It can not be claimed that the surrender of this enormous power into the hands of the governors was essential to the preservation of the Union.

Individuals everywhere in the loyal States tendered directly to the President companies, battalions, regiments, and even brigades in such numbers that the War Department, up to the present time, has not been able to compute them. The mistake, however, was irretrievable. It mattered not that within two years all schemes for recruiting, based on the distribution of new commissions, might prove so many failures. The right to appoint officers, which in the Navy has always been vested in the President, had been given to the States and was continued to them to the end of the war.

SUCCESS OF THE DEPARTMENTS OF SUPPLY.

While our military legislation relating to the line deprived the Government of all right to appoint trained leaders to the regiments of the Volunteer Army, the great departments of supply, on the contrary, were placed wholly under the supervision and control of regular officers. This was accomplished by the simple process of increasing the quartermaster and commissary departments by the addition of volunteer officers commissioned by the President. There was no sudden expansion; with each new brigade each supply department was increased by a captain who could look for instruction to chief quartermasters, chief commissaries, or depot commissaries, who, at the beginning of the war, were exclusively selected from the Army.

Requiring no other qualifications than integrity and business capacity, three or four months sufficed to qualify the brigade and division quartermasters and commissaries for the discharge of their duties. The system as applied to the Medical Department could scarcely be improved. The field duties of the Ordnance Department were performed mostly by officers detailed from the volunteers, while the law of August 6, placed every armory under the superintendence of a regular officer of the department.

It is scarcely worthy of remark that the duty of purchasing clothing and forage, issuing rations, drawing and distributing arms and ammunition, required no technical military knowledge. If a contrary opinion be expressed, we need but refer to the organization of the Quartermaster's Department in 1864.

The regular department then consisted of 1 general, 3 colonels, 4 lieutenant-colonels, 11 majors, 46 captains, 12 storekeepers; total, 77.a These officers, several of whom were given higher rank as colonels and aids-de-camp, were mostly employed as chief quartermasters of armies and departments or in charge of the purchasing depots located in the great cities of the Union.

The volunteer department consisted of 465 captains.

It will be seen by a comparison of the strength of the regular and volunteer departments, the latter being a mere expansion of the former, that nearly all of the field duty of the department was performed by officers appointed directly from civil life.

ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S DEPARTMENT.

But while success in the supply departments did not demand previous military education, the same reasoning should not be applied to the Adjutant-General's Department, whose officers in peace and war should possess a thorough knowledge of the military art. Unfortunately, our Government has never deemed such acquirements necessary, neither have the officers of the Department thus far sought to rise above the mere drudgery of official routine.

a Army Register, 1864, p. 5.

Army Register, 1864, pp. 74, 75.

The success of the supply departments as compared with their failure in the War of 1812, was not wholly due to their supervision by regular officers. In the latter war our armies were, to a great extent, fed and supplied by irresponsible and unscrupulous contractors. Long before the Rebellion this system was abandoned, the supplies may still have been purchased by contract, but they were inspected by regular officers, collected in.o depots, and thence distributed to the Army.

To issue orders, write letters, examine returns, grant furloughs, such is the conception in our service of the duty of an AdjutantGeneral.

We often ridicule the apparent stupidity of foreign governments in placing members of the nobility in command of corps and armies, forgetting that if the commanders so selected have not been carefully. educated the government takes special pains to place at their side chiefs of staff able to perform all the duties of a General in Chief. These chiefs of staff, together with all the officers subordinate to them in their own departments, have had the benefit of careful instruction at war academies especially designed for their education. Learning there all the principles of strategy and grand tactics and the importance of a knowledge of military geography, studying the theory of moving and directing troops in battle, impressed with the idea that their value as staff officers depends upon the assistance they can give to their generals in planning campaigns and fighting battles, they look with contempt upon any official occupation which may tend to degrade them to the position of a clerk. They therefore turn over the multitude of details relating to the proper work of the Army to aids-de-camp, or officers detailed for this purpose.

If we now glance at the operation of our military laws, it will be seen that the President could have appointed all of our commanders from civil life and surrounded them by staff officers without any military acquirements whatever. Four of the five major-generals of volunteers appointed up to the 18th of September, 1861, were selected from civil life. Among the brigadier-generals appointed up to the same date the ratio was changed-47 were in the Regular Army, or had formerly held regular commissions, while 24 were from civil life. The Army Register of 1864 shows that of the 70 major-generals of volunteers, 46 had had previous military education or training, while 24 were appointed from civil life.

Among the brigadiers, 99 had had previous military training, while 171 were appointed from civil life.

The possibility that so many generals might rise through the slow and expensive school of war to high and responsible commands, should have suggested, more than in any foreign system, the necessity of providing competent staff officers to assist them.

The organization of the Adjutant-General's Department in 1864 shows how far the Government ignored such a policy.

The regular adjutants-general consisted of 1 brigadier-general, 2 colonels, 4 lieutenant-colonels, 13 majors; a total of 20; while the volunteer adjutants-general consisted of 60 majors, 249 captains; a total of 309.a

In the campaign of 1864 but 12 of the regular adjutants-general performed their appropriate duties in the field. Of the 30 majors and captains of volunteers, but one in each grade had, before the war, received the benefit of a military education.

By way of contrast, the success of the Medical Department may easily be explained. Early in the war, many of the medical directors and surgeons in charge of permanent hospitals were officers of the regular department.

In the field the surgery for which our Army was famous, was performed by regular surgeons and by staff and regimental surgeons and

a Army Register, 1864.