[2] 
11 
gress of March 1821, reorganizing the army, abolished the r%imen- 
tal and battalion quartermasters, and reduced the number of assret.- 
ants from sixteen to ten; 8o that of thirty-seven officers, thirteen only 
were retained. The same act reduced the purchasing department to 
one Commissary General and two Storekeepers; and the duties re- 
lative to the administration and accountability of army clothing, were 
necessarily transferred to the Quartermaster's Department; thus 
nearly doubling its labors and responsibility, though its force had 
been reduced nearly two-thirds. The lavv, it is true, authorized the 
employment of Subsistence Commissaries in the Quartermaster's 
Department; but they have the duties of tlieir own Department to 
perform; which, at stations Where their services are most necessary, 
give them sufficient employment. Besides, tlie experience of every 
Department proves, that the only way to ensure strict accountability, 
is, to confine officers to tl»e duties of their own branches of service — . 
to compel them to pei'form them, and positively to prohibit their in- 
terference with those of others. The reduction of the rank and file 
of the Army from ten to six thousand men, by no means warranted a 
corresponding reduction in the disbursing departments; for it is well 
known to every intelligent military man, that the labors of most 
branches of the Staff, and particularly of the Quartermaster's De- 
partment, depend, not on the number of troops in service, but On the 
number and remoteness of the posts occupied, the extent of the fron- 
tiers, and the dispersed state of the military resources of the nation. 
The officers at present attached to the Department, are entirely 
inadequate to the proper and efficient discharge of the duties required 
of them, and the compensation of the assistants, on whom necessarily 
devolves most of the laborious details of the Department, does not 
bear a just proportion to their duties and responsibility. 
The officers of that grade now in the Department, are e^ual iii 
capacity and intelligence to those of any other grade or corj>s in the 
army; but I fear that, unless measures be adopted to render their 
iiituation more desirable, they will, for the most part, abandon their 
stations and return to their companies. They should be allowed a 
oompensation, which would not only afford them a competent sup- 
port, but be an equivalent for the talents and labor required in the 
discharge of their duties. But, it may be said, let those who are 
dissatisfied, retire — there are others who would gladly fill their 
places — true, there are — and if the importance of a station depeniled 
upon the number of applicants to fill it, and the merit of those api)li- 
cants upon the clamorous assertion of their pretensiojis, this might 
be good reasoning — but every day's experience proves, that the 
number of applicants does not depend upon the value of the stiition 
sought: — reduce the compensation one half, and they would not be 
dimiuibhed. The difference would then consist in the character, and 
not in the number; — for even if an office be set up to the Lowest bid- 
der, there will always be bidders enough. 
I would, therefore, propose, that in addition to the officers now 
attached to the Department, there be authorized three quarternias- 
