General. In reality they were commanded by the governors, who, like so many dictators, wielded their authority through the Secretary of War.

The expense of transporting hundreds of thousands of men back and forth from the armies in the field was the least objectionable feature of the system. When the patients arrived at the hospitals in their respective States, General Orders, No 78 stated:

The men will then be under the fostering care of the Government while unfit for duty.

But this care was of short duration. Friends were freely permitted to visit the patients and furnish them with comforts, but their home was looked upon as the natural place for the convalescent. The public was informed in the same order that

the unauthorized removal of soldiers from under the control of the United States authorities by any agents whatever, subjects them to the loss of pay and other penalties of desertion.

This admonition amounted to nothing. The governors and political supporters of the Administration had only to speak. They had got their sick transported back to their States; their next step was to demand that they should be sent to their homes. Qnce more they prevailed. Neither the Surgeon-General nor military commanders had any voice in the matter.

In the mind of the politician, political expediency will ever rise above military considerations. The soldiers must go to the polls, and to get there thousands were furloughed, who henceforth remained away from their regiments, some guilty of absence without leave, others guilty of the capital crime of desertion.

The growth of "chronic absenteeism," traceable in the first instance to the system of General Hospitals established under the protection of the governors, affords another proof of the folly of a military policy, based on the cooperation of the States. This will best be shown by referring to the Army of the Potomac, whose present for duty and absentees on different dates were as follows: "

a

The falling off in the present for duty between March 1, and April 30, was due to the detachment of McDowell's corps and Blenker's division, as also Banks's corps which the commander of the Army of the Potomac had designated to occupy the Shenandoah Valley. After the arrival of the Army of the Peninsula, the present for

a McClellan's Report, pp. 10, 11.

duty was also diminished by the present sick, as also those in arrest or confinement which, on the above dates, was as follows: "

July 15, 1862, the present for duty was 88,665, out of an aggregate of 144,407.

In a letter of the same date, General McClellan wrote to the President: The number of men really absent is 38,250. Unquestionably, of the number present some are absent-say 40,000, will cover the absentees. Quite agree with you that more than one-half of these men are probably fit for duty to-day.

He next proposed a remedy:

I have frequently called the attention lately of the War Department to this evil of absenteeism. I think that the exciting of the public press to persistent attack upon officers and soldiers absent from the army, the employment of deputy marshals to arrest and send back deserters, summary dismissal of officers whose names are reported for being absent without leave, and the publication of their names, will exhaust the remedies applicable by the War Department. It is to be remembered that many of those absent by authority are those who have got off either sick or wounded, or under pretense of sickness or wounds, and having originally pretext of authority are still reported absent by authority. If I could receive back the absentees, and could get my sick men up, I would need but small reenforcements to enable me to take Richmond.

There is always confusion and haste in shipping and taking care of the wounded after a battle. There is no time for nice examination of permits to pass here or there. I can now control people getting away better, for the natural opportunities are better. Leakages by desertion occur in every army, and will occur here of course, but I do not at all, however, anticipate anything like a recurrence of what has taken place.

The means of getting away from the army having been systematized and made easy, absenteeism rapidly increased.

July 20, the present for duty was 101,691, the absentees 38,795. September 30, but thirteen days after General McClellan was censured for not hurling into battle his last reserve of 12,000 men, the absentees from his army numbered 76,012. The present for duty in the army lying idle at Washington was 73,745; its absentees were 25,744.

The aggregate absent from the two armies which should have been united at Antietam was 101,756. The total in action was but 87,164.d The astounding fact that at the moment the Confederates invited the people of Maryland to join the cause of secession, the army of absentees exceeded the army sent to battle for the Union, neither excited the alarm of the Government, nor diminished the ardor of the State agents.

a McClellan's Report, pp. 10, 11.

Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, vol. 1, p. 344. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, vol. 1, p. 507. d McClellan's Report, p. 214.

The following letter of December 26, from the Governor of Vermont So the Surgeon-General of the Army, explains how these agents were appointed and the nature of their duties:"

The bearer of this note, my son, Frank F. Holbrook, is commissioned and directed to visit the various United States Hospitals to look up and ascertain the condition of our Vermont soldiers sick or wounded therein. He will report such cases to you as it may seem to him would be benefited by a removal to the hospital at this place. Any facilities you can render to him, will be duly appreciated by myself and the

State of Vermont.

The order of July 14, directed the Surgeon-General to send the men home in "parties.' In recruiting them, the State agents did not stop with the inspection of General Hospitals; they pressed to the front, following closely in the wake of our armies. As the representatives of the governors, interference with their object was a task no less dangerous than delicate; nevertheless, fully aware of the magnitude of the evil, General McClellan, five days after the battle of Antietam, wrote to General Halleck:

Doctor Hitchcock and the Hon. Mr. Crocker, of Massachusetts, are here on the part of the governor of that State, desirous of removing to Massachusetts the most serious cases of those wounded; now, I would really request authority to deliver to them such severe cases as will not be fit for duty in less than thirty days or six weeks, one or more surgeons to be detailed by the Medical Director of this army, to inspect the cases and decide as to those to be sent home, none to be sent without the approval and order of the Medical Director. a

General Halleck replied:

You are authorized to send to Massachusetts the wounded as you propose, putting an army surgeon in general charge of them.b

September 28 General McClellan again wrote:

The reduced condition of the old regiments, and the futility of dependence upon the recruiting service for the replenishing of their ranks, points to the necessity of earnest endeavor to collect all the absent officers and men belonging to these organizations. I am aware that this subject has already occupied the attention of the War Department. I suggest that every hospital and staff officer be inspected within the month of October, by, if necessary, scores of officers detailed for the purpose, to ferret out the old soldiers hidden away therein. Such an inspection would produce more fruit in one week than the recruiting service can in three months.

And finally, I would suggest to the War Department, the employment of the deputy provost-marshals throughout the North, more particularly in the arrest of deserters. Convalescent soldiers leave hospitals, and have done so for the past year, and return home habitually. It is the experience of every army commander that not more than a tenth of the soldiers who are left behind sick ever rejoin. с

The effect of the State hospital system is still further described toward the close of the letter:

A regiment here, which has been employed pretty much during the whole year as depot guard, has had in the course of the year some 500 sick sent to hospitals in the rear. Of these it has received back some 15 or 20. The stragglers, too, are numerous in every division of the army. Many of these desert.

The States of the North are flooded with deserters, absentees, etc. One corps of this army has thirteen thousand and odd men present and fifteen thousand and odd absent. Of this 15,000, 8,000 probably are at work at home-deserters. They can be secured and returned, and I beg that the fullest exercise of the power of the Government may be devoted, if necessary, to the accomplishment of this end. It will have the happiest result in swelling the ranks of the old regiments and in preventing their future reduction.

a Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, vol. 1, p. 497. Ibid., p. 498.

Ibid., p. 506.

While this system reduced the strength of our armies vastly more than actual sickness or wounds received in battle, the reader may nevertheless think it was justifiable on the ground of humanity. No mistake could be greater. All the General Hospitals, wherever located, were under the same Medical Department; the appropriations available for one were available for all; in none was there lack of medical attendance; after each battle patriotic men and women volunteered as nurses, particularly in the hospitals nearest the fields. If the wounded soldier was in need of any comfort or delicacy, which patriotism could provide, it was in the hospitals at the front where the sanitary commission labored with the greatest zeal and devotion.

But there is another side to the question of humanity. In FrancoGerman and Russo-Turkish wars, the invaders brought into the fields of battle two, three, and even four times as many troops as the enemy, and in each case were rewarded by decisive battles and short wars. As a result, the men who perished in battle or from disease were comparatively few.

Our method was the reverse. Before the campaign of 1862 opened, the State agents had spirited away thousands of men who in a few days would have been able to return to the ranks. Shorn in this manner of one-third to one-half of their strength, our armies were frequently compelled to meet the enemy with equal, if not inferior numbers. The war, instead of being decided in a single campaign, lengthened into a series of bloody, but indecisive battles. The contending hosts met and fought only to melt away under each other's fire."

Humanity may have benefited a few deserving soldiers by sending them back to their States, but the penalty exacted from their comrades was a death list, which soon swelled to hundreds of thousands. Events also proved that the arguments of the politician were worthy of less consideration than those of the humanitarian. The SurgeonGeneral and the military commanders could have told them, that defeat in the field meant defeat at the polls; but the politicians, supercilious and headstrong, would listen to no advice. They succeeded in getting a few thousand soldiers to the polls, but neither their presence nor their votes could overcome the depressing effect of the reverses already related. Nearly everywhere the Administration lost ground. In Pennsylvania the opposition gained the legislature and a United States Senator. In New York they elected a governor by a majority of more than 10,000.❜

DISCHARGES.

In discussing the evils which flowed from the system of State hospitals, reference thus far has only been made to absenteeism, but in another way they exerted an influence equally potent in prolonging the war.

Malingerers and deserters, as well as deserving convalescents, had used the hospitals as half-way houses to their homes. For such as were hopelessly disabled, or seemed to be so, a system of discharge had to be devised which in its turn led to speedy and permanent reduction of

a In describing the Battle of Chickamauga, General Croxton, of Kentucky, likened it "to lighting two straws, the burning ends of which were pressed together till both were consumed." No words could better describe our method of prosecuting the c Greeley's American Conflict, vol. 2, pp. 509, 510

war.

our military forces. This was done by General Orders, No. 36. The first paragraph, as we have seen, placed all General Hospitals under the control of the Surgeon-General. The second gave the chief medical officer in charge of the hospitals in any city, power to cause certificates of disability to be made out for such men as, in his judgment, should be discharged from the service."

The order stated:

He will be responsible that the certificates are given for good causes and that they are made in proper form, giving such medical description of the cases, with the degree of disability, as may enable the Pension Office to decide on any claim to pension which may be based upon them.

The certificates of disability, after being signed by the chief medical officer, were forwarded to the military commander in the city, who had the authority to order the discharge.

The operation of this order was at first limited to the cities of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, but May 10, by General Orders, No. 51, department commanders were directed to designate an officer to perform the functions of a military commander-including the signing of certificates-in every city or town where there was a General Hospital."

Whether these orders be considered by themselves, or as the natural sequence of establishing General Hospitals in place of State Hospitals, they present undoubted proof of bad administration. Previous to their issue, thousands of coldiers reported absent sick expected to return to the ranks, but now, to their satisfaction, they found that in each State one or more officers had been located, where they could hope to procure their immediate discharge. Giving the medical officers and the military commanders credit for the strictest integrity and good judgment, it was impossible that gross abuses should not arise under such a system.

In the field, a colonel, anxious to keep his regiment full, could scrutinize each certificate of disability, and daily inspect the condition of the soldier; the surgeon, too, was in sympathy with the regiment to which he belonged. Under the orders quoted, neither the medical officer nor the military commander had the slightest interest in the men or in the regiments from which they asked their discharge.

The medical officer, too, was constantly the victim of fraud and deceit. If a soldier shammed sickness in the regimental hospital the personal knowledge of the surgeon, or that derived from his officers and comrades, might lead to the exposure of the trickster and insure his prompt restoration to duty. In the large General Hospital the surgeon was forced to make up his mind from a few imperfect observations. Malingerers soon became adepts in feigning all manner of

@ This system was also in vogue during the late Spanish-American war. Paragraph 1433 of the Army Regulations placed all General Hospitals under the exclusive control of the Surgeon-General of the Army. General Orders, No. 114, Headquarters of the Army, series of 1898, gave authority to the surgeons in charge of General and Field Hospitals to grant furloughs for one month to sick and wounded soldiers who were able to travel to their homes. The same order required these surgeons to send soldiers who were able to perform full military duty to their regiments, or temporarily to recruit detachments. Those who were permanently disabled were discharged on the usual certificates of disability.-EDITORS.

These military commanders were generally field officers of the regular or volunteer forces. For each one detailed, some regiment lost an officer by detached service.