CHARACTER OF THE TROOPS.

537

To test the result in this Commonwealth, the Adjutant-General, in December last, sent to the mayor of each city, and the selectmen of each town, a circular asking for information respecting · the morals and general conduct of the returned soldiers. More than three hundred answers were received, besides communications from the sheriffs of several counties, all giving a favorable report.

The letter of P. Ball, Esq., Mayor of Worcester, in the very heart of the Commonwealth, is very discriminating and satisfactory.

It adds to this cheering view, on the whole, of the result of the disbandment so suddenly of our vast army, to recollect that a large number of men entered upon a decidedly religious life in the field and hospital, and returned home to do good in the highest form of activity; while a softening, chastening, and saving influence has gone over the land from the shadow of affliction resting on almost every home and heart.

68

CHAPTER XXXII.

A RESUME OF MILITARY OPERATIONS.

Additional Historical Facts. - The Work at the State House. Departure of Troops. The Action of the Commonwealth embarrassed by that of the General Government.- - Response of the Volunteer Militia to the Call of May, 1862. - Quotas. The Draft. Recruits from Abroad. - Massachusetts had a Surplus of Troops in 1864. The Riot. The Volunteers at Home and in the Field. Mob suppressed July, 1863. Draft and Quotas. The Governor upon the Material Support of the Union, and imported Volunteers.- Massachusetts Men in other States. - Notes from the Adjutant-General's Narrative of Visits to the Camps. — Our Soldiers in the Hospitals.

A

RÉSUMÉ of the military operations of the State, in addition to the brief annals of the early military action of the Commonwealth and of the regiments, will present a connected view of martial movements during the four eventful years of conflict.

The excited people of city and country would have been cheered in their work of sacrifice for the endangered Republic, in the early period of the war, could they have looked into the State Capitol, and have seen the Governor, Adjutant-General, and their assistants, day after day, taking their simple lunch in one of the apartments at the hour of dinner, because they had no time for the usual meals; and have witnessed often the same unceasing devotion to the common cause till the "noon of night."

We doubt whether, in any other State of the Union, such exhausting labor by the Executive and all the officers under him was given to the country as might have been witnessed in the rooms of the State House of Massachusetts.

The only embarrassment in mustering the forces of the State was imposed by the General Government, in withholding permission from the State authorities to increase the number of accepted volunteers. The illusion slowly faded from the minds of the Presi dent and cabinet, that a large force would not be required to suppress the Rebellion.

The latter part of May, the Secretary of War advised the Governor that "it was important to reduce rather than enlarge the number of regiments; and, if more were already called for, to reduce the number by discharge;" for the Administration was getting more men than were wanted.

VOLUNTEERING DISCONTINUED.

539

Several thousand troops had volunteered whom the Government would not receive. It therefore became necessary to establish camps under the encampment law of the State, and commence the painful work, to those who discerned the signs of the times, of disbandment. Said the Governor,

It should not be forgotten, that, at this time, six Massachusetts companies, organized in Newburyport, West Cambridge, Milford, Lawrence, Boston, and Cambridgeport, finding no places in our volunteer service, received permission to join the Mozart Regiment and Sickles Brigade, both belonging to the State of New York; that three hundred more Massachusetts men were enlisted in the Union Coast-Guard Regiment, at Fortress Monroe, under command of Col. Wardrop; and that others were also enlisted by persons from other States, who maintained recruiting stations in our towns and cities until they were prohibited by law from thus withdrawing the people of Massachusetts into the organizations of those States. There were estimated by the AdjutantGeneral of this Commonwealth more than three thousand Massachusetts men who thus went to swell the apparent contribution of other communities, while lessening the ability of this State to meet any subsequent draft upon her military population.

When, in February, 1862, the Executive requested leave to recruit four companies, and, with six more acting as garrison in Fort Warren, form a regiment for any emergency which might demand its services, the offer was promptly declined.

Another company of sharpshooters, on the 26th of that month, was also offered; and, after a silence of nearly three weeks, the reply came that it could not be accepted.

Nothing will present more strikingly the delusion that reigned in the high places of power in regard to the nature of the conflict than the subjoined order of the War Department, April 3, 1862:

The recruiting service for volunteers will be discontinued in every State from this date. The officers detached on volunteer recruiting service will join their regiments without delay, taking with them the parties and recruits at their respective stations. The superintendents of volunteer recruiting service will disband their parties, and close their offices, after having taken the necessary steps to carry out these orders.

Some exception was obtained by the Governor to this order several days afterwards, authorizing enlistments to repair losses sustained in the battles of Roanoke and Newbern by Massachusetts regiments; and again, still later, in favor of the Second Regi

ment.

The nation's vanguard of three-months' men that rescued the capital and Fortress Monroe from the imminent peril was followed by the successive marches of the three-years' and the ninemonths' regiments, until, by Oct. 8, 1861, the whole number of regi ments in and on the way to the field of battle was twenty-two; averaging a little more than three for every month. There were in addition to these, during the same period, a battalion of riflemen and a battery of light artillery in the three-months' service, and three batteries of light artillery and two companies of sharpshooters for the longer term. The following eight months gave ten more regiments and eight companies to the Army of the Republic.

July 2, 1862, in compliance with the earnest desire of the governors of the loyal States, the President issued a call for three hundred thousand more volunteers, to serve three years, or during the war.

Up to this date, the State had furnished twenty-seven regiments and thirteen unattached companies; making thirty-one thousand three hundred and ninety-seven troops before the cessation of recruiting in the preceding April.

Massachusetts' new quota was fifteen thousand troops. Proceeding on the basis of the assessors' returns of the men liable to do military duty, the number was as accurately as possible distributed among the towns of the State.

The regiments, both to be completed and raised entirely, were six, running from the Thirty-second to the Thirty-seventh inclusive, and for which four thousand seven hundred troops were required. The remaining ten thousand three hundred were needed to supply the waste in regiments then in the field. Records the Adjutant-General,—

To further aid recruiting, and accommodate the western part of the State, a camp was established at Pittsfield the last of July, and was designated Camp Briggs, in honor of Col. (now Brig.-Gen.) Briggs, a native of Berkshire and a citizen of Pittsfield, who had behaved with great gallantry while in command of the Tenth Regiment in the battles on the Peninsula and between the Chickahominy and James Rivers, in one of which he was severely wounded.

As evidence showing the rapidity with which the fifteen thousand men were raised, it may be stated, that from the time (July 7) the order was issued, to the 8th of September (two months), upwards of four thousand men had been recruited for the old regiments, and sent forward: four companies to complete the Thirty-second Regiment, and nine new regiments, had been formed and

THE DRAFT IN MASSACHUSETTS.

541

organized; and eight of the latter had left the State, and entered upon active duty.

In addition to the troops required, two batteries (the Ninth and Tenth) were also recruited in Camp Stanton, commanded by Capt. De Vecchi and Capt. Sleeper, and were sent forward to Washington in August and October.

Aug. 4, the draft was ordered for the first time, to bring three hundred thousand nine-months' men into the field, of whom nineteen thousand and eighty were to come from Massachusetts. This novel order of things was placed in the able hands of Major William Rogers, Second Assistant Adjutant-General.

In June, 1864, a convention of gentlemen from a large number of the cities and towns of Massachusetts was held in Boston to discuss the charges made against the State, of injustice in making up the quotas of men. It was said that estimates were wrong; speculators in bounties allowed too much latitude, &c. After demonstrating that the rolls in his office were correct, the official head of the military department adds,

Few complaints were ever made that the rolls were incorrect, until lately; and that since the inauguration of the system of offering large state and local bounties. These bounties warmed into life a certain class of men known as recruiting or substitute brokers, who agree to furnish men to fill the quotas of towns for a specified sum. I have not a high opinion of this class; and I have no doubt that many of the selectmen and town-agents have been grossly swindled by them. Numerous cases have come to my knowledge where they have given certificates that they had furnished the men, and that the men had been mustered in, when the facts were not so; and bounty-money has been paid to recruits and brokers, before any assurance could be given that the recruit would be accepted, and credited to the town. I have no doubt, that, in many cases, the recruit and the broker were fellow-partners in the swindle. Again: I have no doubt that gross wrong has been done by these brokers in this way; viz., men who go into new regiments can only be mustered in when the company is filled. This sometimes takes weeks and months. The broker's recruit goes to camp; and, before the muster is made, the broker sells the man again, and he turns up at last as a recruit for a certain ward in Boston, when he originally enlisted, it may be, for the quota of Edgartown.

The record of the State in the history of the draft is an honorable one. This method of raising troops "was, from the first, very distasteful to the people of Massachusetts; and they were disposed to make the most strenuous efforts to raise the requisite number by volunteering before the time for a draft should arrive."

But