30 



ARMY, UNITED STATES. 



that time must have been below 500,000 men. 

 Fortunately, however, the Government pos- 

 sessed not merely the authority but the ma- 

 chinery to remedy the ravages of war, and was 

 about carrying into operation the President's 

 call of December 20, 1864, for 300,000 men, 

 which, as has been stated in the preceding 

 volume of this work, was in point of fact equiv- 

 alent to a call for 1865, as the men authorized 

 by it were mostly obtained in the latter year. 

 By the terms of the call all quotas or parts of 

 quotas not filled by February 15, 1865, were to 

 be filled by draft. In previous years, such had 

 been the difficulty of persuading able-bodied 

 men to forsake remunerative occupations and 

 submit to the hardships of military service, that 

 quotas were rarely filled at the appointed time, 

 and in consequence either a draft or a new call 

 became necessary. Fortunately in the present 

 instance several events, happening subsequent 

 to the call, such as the disastrous rout of Hood 

 before Nashville, the triumphant march of Sher- 

 man through Georgia and Carolina, and the 

 capture of Fort Fisher, by foreshadowing the 

 speedy collapse of the " Confederacy," and con- 

 sequently brief and probably not very arduous 

 terms of service, gave a great stimulus to re- 

 cruiting, and by the end of February the num- 

 ber of men obtained by this means was so 

 large, that the draft lost much of the terror 

 commonly associated with it. 



The main features of the enrolment and con- 

 scription acts of 1863 or 1864, were given in 

 the volume of this work for 1864 (pp. 39, 40). 

 An additional act was passed at the second ses- 

 sion of the Thirty-eighth Congress, which pro- 

 vided that, in case of the revision of any future 

 enrolment, quotas of districts might be adjust- 

 ed and apportioned to such revised enrolment; 

 that persons mustered into the service should 

 be credited to the place where they belong by 

 actual residence ; that substitute brokers, mus- 

 tering officers, and persons liable to draft or 

 drafted, shall be held to a strict accountability 

 for improper persons admitted into the service 

 through their connivance ; and that all desert- 

 ers from the military or naval service " shall be 

 forever incapable of holding any office of trust 

 or profit under the United States, or of exer- 

 cising any rights of citizens thereof." Persons 

 leaving the district in which they are enrolled, 

 or going beyond the limits of the United States, 

 with intent to avoid any draft into the military 

 or naval service, duly ordered, are made liable 

 to a similar penalty. The President, in con- 

 formity with a special provision of the act, by 

 his proclamation of March 10th, notified desert- 

 era that they would be pardoned upon condition 

 of returning within sixty days to their regi- 

 ments, and serving for a period of time equal 

 to their original term of enlistment. The 

 twenty-third "section enacted : 



Thnt any person or persons enrolled in any sub- 

 district may, afler notice of a draft, and before the 

 same shall have taken place, cause to be mustered 

 into the service of the United States such number of 



recruits, not subject to draft, as they may deem ex- 

 pedient, which recruits shall stand to the credit of 

 the persons thus causing them to be mustered in, 

 and shall be taken as substitutes for such persons, or 

 so many of them as may be drafted, to the extent of 

 the number of such recruits, and in the order desig- 

 nated by the principals at the time such recruits are 

 thus as aforesaid mustered in. 



This provision the Attorney-General, in an 

 elaborate opinion, decided did not conflict with 

 that section of the act of 1864 which enables 

 any enrolled person, before a draft, to furnish 

 " an acceptable substitute who is not liable to 

 draft, nor at the time in the military or naval 

 service of the United States," and provides that 

 the person so furnishing such substitute, " shall 

 be exempt from draft during the time for which 

 such substitute shall not be liable to draft, not 

 exceeding the time for which such substitute 

 shall have been accepted." On the contrary, 

 he was of the opinion that it provided for quite 

 another case than that contemplated in the act 

 of 1864, and was designed to offer inducement 

 and present a stimulus to numbers or associa- 

 tions of individuals to obtain volunteer recruits 

 for the army, and thus to encourage recruiting 

 rather than the purchase of substitutes. The 

 right, however, of the enrolled person, before 

 the draft, to furnish a substitute, with the quali- 

 fication above stated, and thus secure his ex- 

 emption during the time for which such substi- 

 tute shall have been accepted, is not in any 

 respect disturbed. He also held that recruits, 

 obtained in accordance with the section above 

 quoted, are to be considered as other volunteer 

 recruits obtained at the expense of the United 

 States, and not as substitutes, in the ordinary 

 sense of the term, who are furnished at the cost 

 of the principals. 



Subsequent to February 15th enlistments in- 

 creased rather than diminished, and official re- 

 ports show that on March 1st the aggregate 

 national military force of all arms, officers and 

 men, was 965,591. 



This force was augmented on May 1st by en- 

 listments to the number of 1,000,516 of all 

 arms, officers and men, of whom probably about 

 650,000 were available for active duty. This 

 nearly corresponds with the figures for May 1, 

 1864, which placed the aggregate national force 

 at 970,710 men, of whom 662,345 were present 

 for duty. The fact that after a year of almost 

 unparalleled fighting and slaughter the army 

 was rec'iiited up to its original standard, speaks 

 volumes in favor of the energy of the Govern- 

 ment and the determination of the people. 



Of the whole number of troops in the service 

 on May 1, 1865, 194,635 were obtained under 

 the call of December, 1864, for 300,000 men, as 

 will appear by the following table : 



Volunteers (white) 180.620 



Volunteers (colored) . . 10,055 



Bflgohn.... 6,958 



Seamen 9,106 



Marine Corps 819 



Drafted men beld to personal service 12.f>G(j 



Substitutes for drafted men 12.014 



Substitutes for enrolled men 12,991 



Whole number raised under December call, 194,635 



