The last act, approved August 6, increased the pay of private soldiers of the Regular and Volunteer Army from $12 to $13 per month. The third section of this act reads as follows:

That all the acts, proclamations, and orders of the President of the United States after the 4th of March, 1861, respecting the Army and Navy of the United States, and calling out or relating to the militia or volunteers from the States, are hereby approved and in all respects legalized and made valid, to the same intent and with the same effect as if they had been issued and done under the previous express authority and direction of the Congress of the United States.@

This bill was introduced in the Senate on the 5th of August by Mr. Wilson, who moved the amendment to legalize the President's acts and proclamation. The unanimity with which the Senate concurred, was indicated by a vote of 37 yeas to 5 nays. In the House, all objections having been withdrawn, the bill was taken up and passed under a suspension of the rules, two-thirds voting in the affirmative.

For

The date of the last law shows that all the foregoing military legislation was discussed and enacted within the space of one month. hard work and patriotic zeal, no Congress ever deserved in an equal degree the praise and gratitude of the nation. The wisdom of its measures, however, must be judged by their fruits.

DEFECTS OF THE MILITARY LEGISLATION IN 1861.

On the 3d of April, 1863, nearly two years after the fall of Fort Sumter, the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War reported to Congress:

It needs but to refer to the history of the Congress just closed, its prompt and thorough action, clothing the Executive with the fullest power, placing at his disposal all the resources of men and money which this nation possessed, to prove that your committee judged rightly that Congress needed no prompting from them to do its entire duty.

Not upon those whose duty it was to provide the means necessary to put down the Rebellion, but upon those whose duty it was to rigthfully apply those means and the agents they employed for that purpose, rested the blame, if any, that the hopes of the nation have not been realized, and its expectations have been so long disappointed. b

The surviving officers and soldiers of our armies, many of whom participated in the battle of Bull Run, will not for a moment deny that through the inexperience of themselves and their commanders the war for the Union was prolonged.

But when all of their mistakes are summed up and their deficiencies considered, it will still be found that the underlying causes were

a Callan's Military Laws of the United States, sec. 3, p. 490.

Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, vol. 1, p. 4.

C Apparently the best opportunity ever presented to the Army of the Potomac to strike its adversary a fatal blow was in December, 1861. On the 10th of this month the aggregate present was 185,000 men. (Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, vol. 1, pp. 69, 70.)

The Confederates near Centreville, at little more than one day's march, numbered, according to their commander, less than 50,000 effectives. (Johnston's Narrative of Military Operations, p. 84.)

But had the Confederate Army, which, through short enlistments, was rapidly hastening to its dissolution, been totally defeated, it cannot be affirmed that such a reverse would have terminated the war. Its probable effect would have been to hasten the passage of the law of conscription by three or four months, thereby giving to the Confederacy at the opening of the spring campaign an army far superior in numbers and discipline to the one which actually confronted the Army of the Potomac when it drew near the Confederate capital.

inherent in a military system which was the creature of law. The committee, however, took the opposite view. It confidently stated that in voting men and money, Congress had discharged its whole duty. Whatever disasters might afterwards ensue, the blame should not be located on the representatives of the people, but upon the citizen soldiers sent to the field to fight their country's battles. As it is manifest that no improvement in our military policy can be made, so long as Congress shall cherish this fatal delusion, it becomes all the more important to subject the military legislation of 1861 to a searching analysis. Nor should any lover of his country be indifferent to the result. We speak of the people as sovereign, which, with qualifications, is true. They elect the members of the House of Representatives, and their agents, the legislatures of the States, elect the members of the Senate, but when the two Houses are in Congress assembled, the Constitution proclaims that with them, and not with the people, is vested the supreme power to raise and support armies. By the action of Congress the people are therefore bound to abide. If its military legislation be wise, peace may speedily ensue; if unwise, for every mistake the people must yield their blood and treasure.

In 1792 Congress organized the militia and declared in favor of obligatory military service, on the theory that the militia were the bulwark of the nation. Subsequently Indian difficulties and armed conflicts with two foreign nations compelled it to raise and support a regular army. Both of these organizations in 1861 it summarily rejected. Instead of expanding the Regular Army, and making it the chief instrument in executing the national will, it violated the practice of every civilized nation by calling into existence an army of a million untrained officers and men. But it may be replied that far from rejecting the Army, Congress, on the contrary, tripled its strength by increasing its organization from 13,024 to 39,273.

a

This increase was a mere expansion on paper. Give men a choice between regulars, volunteers, and militia, and they will invariably select the organization whose laxity of discipline is greatest. The Rebellion gave another proof of this truth. By January 1, 1863, the Army attained a maximum of only 25,436, which was less than 3 per cent of the total force then in the field."

Yet this feeble proportion gives an exaggerated idea of the part the Army was to play in the great struggle for the preservation of the Union. We shall find on further investigation that the total number of men recruited for the Army, even after a resort to conscription, was less than three-thousandths, one-third of 1 per cent of the millions who poured forth in new and untried organizations.

a The figure 13,024 represents the organization of the Army on the supposition that all of its companies were east of the Mississippi. Had all of them been west of the Mississippi beyond the reach of the Government, the law of 1850 would have permitted an aggregate of 18,666. On the 1st of January, 1862, 69 of the 198 companies of the old army were stationed or en route to stations on the Western frontier. (Army Register, 1861, p. 41; also Army Register, 1862, p. 81.)

Final report of the Provost-Marshal-General, p. 102.

Such was the depletion of the Army in the spring of 1862 that the artillery could only be kept in serviceable condition by transfers from the volunteer infantry. From this time to the end of the war, the regular batteries which served as a model for the volunteer artillery, were scarcely more than volunteer batteries, commanded by regular officers. The alacrity with which men once in the field volunteered for the regular artillery-transfers to the cavalry would have been equally popular-will be used further on, as an argument for the recruitment of these two arms of service in future wars.

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This disappearance of the Regular Army as a factor was due to the mistaken confidence of Congress in the system of voluntary enlistments. The Revolution and the War of 1812 had made it evident that being the chief cause of national weakness they could not be relied upon in a long war. The two wars further conclusively proved that the patriotism of the people should not be judged by the sole test of their willingness to serve in the ranks. Bounties, however objectionable and demoralizing, are evidences of patriotism and may be accepted as a guaranty that under any economic military system recruits will never be wanting. But there was no element of economy in the system of 1861. The male population of the loyal States, as ascertained by the census a year previous, was 10,795,422. The first sections of the laws of July 22 and 25 sanctioned an immediate call for 1,000,000 men, or nearly one-tenth of the entire male population. No greater demand was ever made on the patriotism of a people. Yet, when two years later an enrollment preparatory to a draft disclosed that there were 2,254,063 men liable to conscription (not including the armies in the field), the amazing fact was also discovered that without compulsion 1,356,593 citizens had already assumed the character of soldiers.

It should not, therefore, surprise us that under a system so improvident, voluntary enlistments finally proved a failure. The enormous demands for men are easily accounted for. The laws, like those at the beginning of each previous war, encouraged short enlistments by giving the President the power to call out volunteers for any term of service from six months to three years. The number of men furnished was to be equalized among the States according to population. The men having been organized into regiments, no provision was made for their recruitment; there were no regimental depots, no assignments of regiments to Congressional districts, no requirement that any regiment raised in any State or district should be kept full by voluntary enlistment or draft. There was but one method to prevent depletion, and that the one which, since the siege of Boston, had always proved ineffective-detaching recruiting parties from the field.

The above defects of legislation, with all the tendencies to protract the war, are to be found in the first sections of the two laws approved by the President within four days after the battle of Bull Run.

The next defects should be sought for under the head of organization. In every military system which has triumphed in modern war the officers have been recognized as the brain of the army, and to prepare them for their trust, governments have spared no pains to give them special education and training. Generals have not been left to acquire a knowledge of their profession on the field of maneuver in time of peace; they have been granted all the advantages of war academies, where they and the members of their staffs have been taught in their minutest details all the principles of the military art."

The two laws of 1861 authorized the President to appoint for the command of the million of volunteers such a number of major and brigadier-generals as, in his judgment, their organization might require. The only recognition of the value of military education to be found in our volunteer system was contained in the fourth section of the law authorizing the first half million; this section gave the President power to appoint 6 major-generals and 18 brigadier-generals,

CAt the beginning of the Austria-Prussian war every general in the Prussian army was a graduate of the War Academy of Berlin.

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.

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.

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