CHAPTER XXVII.

INFLUENCE OF THE STATES IN DEPLETING OUR ARMIES.

No sooner was the Army of 1861 organized and equipped, than the governors began to take back with one hand what they had given with the other. This was the result of our system, rather than of deliberate design. In all foreign wars, as well as civil commotions greater than a riot or insurrection, the Constitution intended the Government should "raise and support" its own armies, but Congress thought differently.

STATE HOSPITALS.

In the hasty legislation of 1861, it enacted that the Government should support its armies, but their organization, on the confederate principles, it turned over to the States. The recruitment and subsistence of the new levies till they were mustered into service, naturally carried with it the care of the sick. To meet this necessity, State and private hospitals sprang up in nearly all large cities. As partial compensation, General Orders, No. 47, of April 26, 1862, directed:

When the care of sick and wounded soldiers is assumed by the States from which they come, the Subsistence Department will commute their ration at 25 cents.

The maintenance of these hospitals soon became a burden to the States, but, instead of urging they be discontinued, the governors demanded that they be transferred to the Government, or that "United States General Hospitals" be established in their places. General Crane, then Assistant Surgeon-General, states:

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Many hospitals were established under State auspices and were apparently transferred to the General Government by common consent. * The governors and surgeons-general of States found these hospitals too costly and were anxious to transfer.

The transfer, General Crane further states, took place about June, 1862.

In regard to the policy of establishing the General Hospitals, Dr. Jos. R. Smith, surgeon, U. S. Army, who in 1862 acted in the capacity of Assistant Surgeon-General, states:

The governors of the different States did not ask for State hospitals in the sense of hospitals supported and controlled by the individual States, but they did ask for the establishment of United States general hospitals at different places within their States, and further, asked that the sick soldiers from the different States be sent for treatment to the hospitals in those States, and this, irrespective of distance, expense, or convenience.

It was the natural feeling that the sick citizen soldier should desire to go to his home, relatives, and friends for care and nursing during a tedious convalescence, and that friends and relatives should desire to have him. It was the policy, always, of the Surgeon-General to comply with this sentiment, as far as the public interest would permit.

The patients in these hospitals were by no means limited to the men who fell ill before their regiments left their States. It was early discovered by military commanders, that when men left the field for medical treatment, they were lost for the campaign, if not for the war. The Medical Department to remedy the evil, began, in 1861, to establish general hospitals within all the great military departments, where the sick and wounded received every care and attention which liberal appropriations and medical skill could suggest; this was not enough, Congress had committed the Government to the confederate system.

The Military Committee of the Senate had declared the volunteers to be militia, or State troops in the service of the United States. The military patronage thus thrown into the hands of the governors vastly increased their personal and political power. Their care and solicitude for their regiments followed them to the field, and homesick soldiers were forwarded from their homes to the capitals of their States. In treating of the prosecution of foreign or civil wars political influences cannot be ignored. However patriotic they may have been, and no one will deny that they were patriotic, it was impossible that the situation should not have suggested to the chief magistrates of the States new means for extending and promoting their political aims.

A second gubernatorial term, an election to the Senate, or the Presidency itself, were all prizes within the field of vision of every "War Governor." To be the recognized friend and champion of the soldier was a sure means of securing favor with the people. Having got their hospitals by the method adopted for raising our armies, all that remained for the governors was to demand that their sick and wounded should be sent home to fill them; their success again proved that systems are stronger than men. The Government, in adopting the voluntary system which it was soon after forced to abandon, had taken the position of a suppliant. It was vain for military commanders or the Medical Department to protest. The laws had made the governors supreme, and to every argument in opposition to their designs they could simply reply, "If you refuse to send us back our sick and wounded soldiers we can raise no more men." In default of obligatory military service, the argument was conclusive; the Government yielded, the governors appointed their agents, chartered their steamers, and sending them to the theaters of military operations, began the removal of the sick and wounded to hospitals, thousands of miles from the field of battle.

The system once in operation, military commanders were powerless to stop, or even check, the depletion of their armies. The SurgeonGeneral at the seat of Government recognized the evil, but all he could do was to seek to control it. On the 17th of May, General Hammond, recently appointed Surgeon-General, wrote to the Secretary of War:

Great confusion and inconvenience to the service, together with much suffering to the sick and wounded, result from the interference of the State agents and others who are not acting under direction of this bureau. Men are taken from the hospitals before time is given to perform necessary operations or so soon after the operation that death is very frequently the consequence. So well convinced are the agents of the States of Maine and New Jersey of its impropriety, that they voluntarily gave up their appointments and returned home. I have, therefore, respectfully to request that to this bureau may be assigned the entire control of the sick of the Army, whether in camp, hospitals, or transports. I am ready to assume the entire responsibility, and to answer for the full performance of the duties involved, provided that

the means of transportation, now in the hands of State agents, State surgeons-general, and others, be put at my disposal, in order that persons accountable to this Department may be placed in charge.

By direction of the Secretary of War, the Assistant Secretary of War replied:

You have authority in virtue of your office to take charge of all the sick and wounded of the Army, wherever they may be, and you are responsible for their care, comfort, and proper medical treatment. The Quartermaster-General, on your requisition, will furnish all necessary transportation.

This authority, while in a measure enabling the Surgeon-General to regulate the previously irresponsible action of the State agents, proved only a temporary check to the evil they had so successfully inaugurated.

It was a great misfortune that at this time the Government, from short-sighted political considerations, found itself in full sympathy with the governors.

The dispersion of the great army at Corinth and the refusal to concentrate the forces in Virginia at Richmond, had brought military operations to a standstill, soon to be followed by a wave of rebellion which reached Ohio and swept across the Potomac. Needless reverses had diminished the confidence of the people in the conduct of the war, and already threatened a political reaction. To avert further disasters a second great army had to be called for. In all, more than a million of patriots, equal to nearly one-eighteenth of the total population, had volunteered for the defense of the Union. The withdrawal from the States of so many of the nation's defenders tended to jeopardize the success of the Administration in the approaching elections. The expedient of permitting the soldier in the field to vote as well as fight had not yet been adopted. Their absence from their precincts counted, therefore, as so much gain to their political opponents.

ABSENTEEISM AND DESERTIONS.

Quick to foresee the danger, the political supporters of the Government everywhere demanded that all soldiers temporarily disqualified for field service, be sent home to vote. Their representation produced the desired effect. On the 14th of July, the Secretary of War, in General Orders, No. 78, directed:

When it is expedient and advisable, sick and wounded patients may, under the direction of the Surgeon-General, be transferred in parties, but not in individual cases, to hospitals at the North; and, as far as practicable, the men will be sent to States in which their regiments were raised, provided United States Hospitals have been established there.

Pursuant to this authority, the transfer of the soldiers back to their States speedily assumed formidable proportions. Hospital trains were fitted up on the great lines of railway, while hospital steamers plied on the sea and all the great rivers.

Referring to this order and its effects, Doctor Smith states:

Under this order immense numbers of sick and wounded were transferred by the order of the Surgeon-General. These numbers I have now no means of knowing, but believe they reached hundreds of thousands, and for them was established a magnificent and expensive system of transportation by railroad and steamer. The tender feelings of human nature above spoken of, were not, however, the only ones acting in this matter; in addition, the presence of native soldiers was desired for their votes to influence the elections and accordingly the efforts of politicians were redoubled to obtain more and larger hospitals within their borders, and to

secure more frequent and numerous transfers. Whenever it was proper, the SurgeonGeneral seconded these efforts; but when hospital room elsewhere was vacant and abundant, and whenever it was manifestly for the interests of the Government and the sick and wounded themselves, to care for them where they then were, no course was left the Surgeon-General but to disapprove applications for necessary hospitals, and distant, expensive, and not needed transfers.

Very frequently this was the case. Such distances, say, as from Texas to Maine and Florida to Minnesota rendered the transfer of the hospital inmates often dangerous and impossible, while the establishment at and near the bases of military operations of large and complete general hospitals-the best the world ever saw-rendered the establishment of distant hospitals and movement of the sick an unnecessary expense.

It was found, in addition, that separating the soldier so far from his company and regiment engendered a state of chronic absenteeism; armies were depleted, and the generals commanding the principal armies objected in consequence to the separation of the sick from their immediate commands save when necessary to convalescence and recovery of health. Notwithstanding all this, every disapproval by the SurgeonGeneral of an application for the establishment of a new unnecessary hospital, or an unnecessary and injudicious transfer of sick, caused great dissatisfaction, and the consistent action of the Surgeon-General in this matter, in the true interests of the Government, secured to him great ill will on the part of State officials and the Secretary of War. * Previous to the entry to office of Surgeon-General Hammond the General Hospitals of the Army were inadequate.

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General Hammond, the Surgeon-General at that time, wrote:

The Surgeon-General's Office had great trouble to prevent the wholesale deportation of the sick soldiers to hospitals within their respective States, when there was no other reason for the journey than the fact that they had been recruited within such States. Sometimes the governors succeeded in effecting the change through the Secretary of War, without even the knowledge of the Surgeon-General. a

The War of 1812 proved to the satisfaction of the reflecting observer, that in the absence of a professional General in Chief, no civilian could successfully command and administer our armies. Mr. Eustis, as Secretary of War tried it first, but after the disasters of Detroit and Queenstown, he was compelled to retire at the request of the Administration leaders in Congress. Mr. Armstrong, arbitrary, self-willed, and self-confident, tried it next, but with no better success.

Mr. Stanton, more fortunate than his predecessors, retained his office till the suppression of the Rebellion, and was rewarded at last by the title of the "great War Secretary." Called to his high office on the 13th of January, 1862, the removal of the General in Chief, on the 13th of March, concentrated in his person the command and administration of the entire military resources of the people.

Under the ruling of the Attorney-General, his orders were legal and valid as the orders of the President, without any reference to the Chief Magistrate. The decision of the Attorney-General also made it a matter of taste whether, in any situation, he should consult the constitutional Commander in Chief.

The time which he should have given exclusively to organizing, recruiting, and supplying our armies he at first blindly gave to revising the plans of military commanders. Chaos forthwith reigned in the field, nor did it wholly cease till 1864, when the revival of the grade i of lieutenant-general gave our armies an actual General in Chief.

In the conduct of war no principle is better established than this: That within the province or territorial limits assigned to any military: commander, his authority must be supreme.

It is also a principle of wise and economical administration, that within these limits no staff officers, or chief of staff corps shall exer

a Letter from Surgeon-General W. A. Hammond, retired, dated January 26, 1880.

cise command or authority, except by direction of the military commander, or subject to his approval. Both of these fundamental principles were violated in General Orders, No. 36 and 78, dated, respectively, April 7 and July 14, 1862. The first paragraph of General Orders, No. 36, issued but three days after the Departments of Rappahannock and Shenandoah were established, reads:

I. The General Hospitals are under the direction of the Surgeon-General. Orders not involving expense of transportation may be given by him to transfer medical officers or hospital stewards from one General Hospital to another, as he may deem best for the service. a

From this paragraph it will be seen that all the General Hospitals passed at once under the control of the Surgeon-General and the medical officers he might choose to appoint.

It mattered not where the hospitals were located, whether in the most distant Northern States, or within the immediate theater of war, as at Washington, Alexandria, Fort Monroe, Louisville, Nashville, or Memphis wherever it might be, each one within a military department constituted an imperium in imperio. The medical officer in charge was independent of all military supervision.

Commanders could order no inspections; their authority had ceased; the soldier who could step from the ranks and gain admission to the general hospital was free from military duty; his superiors could not touch him. Although there may have been hundreds if not thousands of men fit for duty, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, as it marched through Alexandria and Washington on its way to Antietam, could not order back to his regiment a single soldier or medical attendant from any of the hospitals, without violating the orders of the Secretary of War.

The second order, which permitted sick and wounded patientsunder the direction of the Surgeon-General to be transferred in parties, but not in individual cases, to hospitals at the North

made the General Hospitals at the front so many feeders for the hospitals in the States. By easy stages soldiers in the West were moved back from Memphis to Cairo, Cairo to St. Louis, and from St. Louis to the hospitals in the States. Another line of transport was from Nashville to Louisville, Louisville to Cincinnati and Indianapolis, and thence to their respective destinations.

In the East, the drainage from the Army of the Potomac was from the field, to Fort Monroe, Alexandria, and Washington; thence by rail and steamers to the North, East, and West.

The effect of these orders, was to divide the armies of the Union into two distinct classes-one moving to the front, the other to the rear. The imperfect command of the first class was bestowed upon the generals in the field. Those of the second class, recruited by the agents of the States from the General Hospitals at the front, and which were maintained by their zeal and activity, between the limits of one and two hundred thousand men, were nominally commanded by the Surgeon

a See "History of the Medical Department" (Brown).

This was the case during the recent Spanish war.-EDITORS.

The number of officers and men absent sick June 30, 1864, was 146,130; absent with leave, mostly sick and wounded, 32,494. Total 178,624. (Returns from Adjutant-General's Office.)