Governor’s Certificate of Honorable Membership.
Governor’s Certificate of Honorable Membership.
Governor’s Certificate of Honorable Membership.
To this joint resolution of the legislature the governor responded with a handsome souvenir entitled
THE SQUIRREL HUNTER’S DISCHARGE.
Honorable Discharge.
Honorable Discharge.
Honorable Discharge.
A year after the services were performed, fifteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-six were issued to Squirrel Hunters, which, however, did not embrace more than one-third of the number that responded to the call and took part in the defense of Cincinnati and the Kentucky cities.
Those with certificates and those having none, but who responded to the call, are no less “Squirrel Hunters,” descendants of the Spirit of ’76—a chosen people to maintain and perpetuate the model government of the world.
From the Declaration of Independence to the present time the power of this free people has been as manifestly directed by unseen forces as ever was that of the favorite nation which came out from Egypt under a cloud; and the influences which dictated the dedication of the North-west to freedom will not likely permit the purpose to be compromised or changed.
That which was considered a long duration of the war, with frequent calls for troops, became exceedingly discouraging. And it was evident, after two years, that the strength of the federal army was inadequate for successful offensive operations. At the beginning of 1863, it required nearly four hundred thousand recruits to fill the companies and regiments then in service up to the standard enumeration. Death, disaster, and desertion begat inactivity, with an apparent exhaustion of former volunteer supplies; and secession was becoming more noisy and defiant inall the loyal states. This condition of things brought out the conscript act, and under it the Provost-Marshal General’s Bureau was organized June 1, 1863, by James B. Fry, and early in 1864, this efficient officer and his assistants had the loyal states well canvassed, and thoroughly organized, to obtain all the men necessary to put down the Rebellion. Each state was divided into districts; each district was placed under the management of commissioned officers, termed a Board of Enrollment, consisting of a provost-marshal, commissioner, and surgeon, whose business it was to make a full and exact enrollment of all persons liable to conscription under the law of March 3, 1863, and its amendments, showing a complete exhibit of the military resources in men over twenty and under forty-five years of age, with the names alphabetically arranged, with description of person and occupation in each sub-district.
The enrollment being cleared of persons having manifest disability of a permanent character, each sub-district (township or ward) was required to furnish its assigned quota under calls for men, whether the able-bodied individuals enrolled continued to reside in that sub-district or not. Unless it could be shown such person or persons were correctly enrolled in another sub-district, were in the service uncredited or credited to another sub-district, the removal of residence could not relieve theobligation of the sub-district where such person or persons were enrolled.
This new arrangement at first was exceedingly unpopular with rebel sympathizers in the loyal states, but the bureau soon established a business that impressed a belief in secession circles that it was an energetic war measure that would soon end theunpleasantness. This system of furnishing soldiers showed many advantages over that of voluntary enlistments. Large demands for men could be met immediately, and at the same time it made every citizen, whether loyal or disloyal, equally interested in having the quotas filled by means of bounties in order to avoid sub-district drafts.
And from an enrollment of two million two hundred and fifty-four thousand persons liable to do military service, the bureau, in a brief period, forwarded under calls of the government one million one hundred and twenty thousand six hundred and twenty-one able-bodied soldiers, and with these, and those already in the field, the would-be Southern Confederacy crumbled before the federal power.
It cost the government for raising troops from the commencement of the war until May 1, 1863, the date the recruiting service was turned over to the Provost-Marshal General’s Bureau, forty-six million one hundred and twenty-four thousand one hundred and sixty-two dollars, orthirty-fourdollars for each man, exclusive of pay or bounty,while putting soldiers in the service under the conscript act cost the government nothing. The Provost-Marshal General neither asked nor received an appropriation, but under the law he made the bureau pay all attendant expenses, and after paying out sixteen million nine hundred and seventy-six thousand two hundred and eleven dollars for recruiting over one million men and capturing and forwarding seventy-six thousand five hundred and twenty-six deserters (now wards), General Fry turned into the Treasury of the United States, to the credit of the bureau, nine million three hundred and ninety thousand one hundred and five dollars, all of which proved a matter of great economy to the government, while the recruiting of the army cost less than one third as much as that adopted previous to the organization of the bureau, and that without cost to the government.
The draft-wheel and its uses were not the most pleasant things to contemplate, and to soften down the enactment Congress authorized recruiting in Southern states, regardless of color or previous condition, that by means of agents and liberal bounties very little drafting would likely be necessary. And it was soon discovered that blue suits and muskets were quite becoming to the colored man. “The shape of the cranium, the length of the forearm, thinness of the gastrocnemius muscles, and flatness of the feet,” all disappeared at the War Office, and for which wassubstituted, “He can be made a mechanical soldier to great perfection, skilled in the use of arms, and the machinery of tactics; and, by reason of the obstinacy of his disposition and the depth of his passions, may become most powerfulin a charge or in resisting the onset of an enemy.”
Draft Wheel—Twelfth District, Ohio.BOARD OF ENROLLMENT:CAPT. GEO. W. ROBY, Provost Marshal.A. KAGY, Commissioner of Enrollment.DR. N. E. JONES, Surgeon Board of Enrollment.
Draft Wheel—Twelfth District, Ohio.BOARD OF ENROLLMENT:CAPT. GEO. W. ROBY, Provost Marshal.A. KAGY, Commissioner of Enrollment.DR. N. E. JONES, Surgeon Board of Enrollment.
Draft Wheel—Twelfth District, Ohio.
BOARD OF ENROLLMENT:
CAPT. GEO. W. ROBY, Provost Marshal.A. KAGY, Commissioner of Enrollment.DR. N. E. JONES, Surgeon Board of Enrollment.
CAPT. GEO. W. ROBY, Provost Marshal.A. KAGY, Commissioner of Enrollment.DR. N. E. JONES, Surgeon Board of Enrollment.
The race was tried and showed the better predictions true. Slavery had woven prejudices around the name and color, until the government, under Lincoln, Stanton, Chase, and a Congress of loyal states, could find no place or mustering officer (previous to the operation of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau), short of Massachusetts, that could make the man of color ready to obey orders and use a gun. Nothing in history gives a clearer view of the height and depth of the degrading influences of the institution upon those who were free than the treatment of the loyal colored man and citizen during the efforts of the government to save the Union. Through fear or cowardice his proffered aid was rejected at government recruiting offices, while Massachusetts was procuring colored credit from the loyal states at unusually small bounties.
It may have been so ordered; the diet may have contained enough meat to offend. Still, the colored troops got to the front before the war was over, and did much in reinforcing the wasting armies and lifting anxious sub-districts out of the draft, as well as covering their race with glory by their bravery and efficiency.
Persons placed in the service by means of the draft-wheel generally procured substitutes—persons not liable to draft—aliens and under-age individuals, who, for three years’ service or duringthe war, commanded one thousand dollars, while the bounty for enlistments of those liable to draft varied from three to five hundred dollars. During the war much of the territory of Ohio was unimproved woods, though thickly settled with cabin civilization. These new settlements were made by the descendants of original Squirrel Hunters—persons born in the state, and with this legacy generally established homes in new counties, in the woods, with like primitive beginnings to those of their ancestors. At the announcement of secession they were ready to serve their country, and it was from these newer and poorer sections that Ohio obtained her volunteers—from a hardy and efficient class of young men, accustomed to active life and the use of the gun.
The recruits from Ohio were chiefly volunteer enlistments. This was manifestly so in the Twelfth district, in which the author was personally and officially interested. The district was composed of Ross, Pickaway, Fairfield, Hocking, Perry, and Pike counties, embracing sixty miles in length of the fertile Scioto valley, containing in 1860 one hundred and thirty-nine thousand four hundred and fifty-six inhabitants, with a corrected enrollment of eighteen thousand three hundred and seventy-one persons liable to military service. Of this enrollment, thirteen thousand six hundred and twenty-eight were farmers, and the remaining four thousand seven hundredand forty-three comprised persons of other occupations.
Taking this district as an average of the other districts in the state, it shows the volunteers sent to the front from Ohio were chiefly young men born in the state—hardy and well-developedSquirrel Hunters. Of seventeen hundred and fifty-five volunteers forwarded by this district, from July 4, 1864, to April 30, 1865, one thousand, two hundred and twenty-nine were Ohio boys, with an average of 23.77 years—the remaining five hundred and twenty-six were from twenty-four states and fifteen foreign countries, with an average of 27.13 years. Notwithstanding the more favorable age of the latter group for physical development, the measurements stand decidedly in favor of the Ohio born, and if adding to the latter the nine hundred and eighty-seven drafted men, natives of Ohio, the favorable difference becomes still more apparent.
The Provost-Marshal General, in his report to the War Department, states there was not a single district in all the loyal states in which the board of enrollment was free from the annoyance of evil disposed persons hostile to the Government, who were ever ready and willing to embarrass its operation by stimulating resistance to the draft or discouraging enlistments. It was when the disloyal element experienced the firmness and earnestness of the boards, and felt the power behind them for the enforcement ofthe law, that they became co-laborers and most successful recruiting agents. This was exceedingly gratifying to the Government, and caused the Provost-Marshal General to say to the Secretary of War: “I am confident there is no class of public servants to whom the country is more indebted for valuable services rendered than the District Provost-Marshals and their associates, comprising the Boards of Enrollment, by whose efforts the army of the Union, which suppressed the Rebellion, was mainly recruited.” Still, Hon. Hoke Smith, ex-Rebel and Secretary of the Interior, published the information that these recruiting officers are not pensionable under the disability act of Congress, June 27, 1890, for the reason “these officers were not in the war,” and so says the present Commissioner of Pensions, Hon. Henry Clay Evens. Autocratic decisions are sometimes quite at variance with sound sense as well as suggestive of one of ex-President Lincoln’s best stories.
It can not be said that the Ohio Squirrel Hunters were not in the war, for not a few of them were pensioned long before the ex-secretary surrendered his arms of rebellion against the Government he now fosters. The oppressors of slavery in their wicked attempts to destroy the Union, induced a war that brought with it incalculable sorrow and suffering—a war that words and figures fail to give an approximate realization of its magnitude. Dollars can be measured by millions, but the tears, heart aches and lossof two hundred and eighty-seven thousand, seven hundred and eighty-nine loyal men who gave their lives for liberty, and are historically represented by head-stones that whiten the national cemeteries, can no more be estimated than can the good that must forever flow to the United States in wiping out the iniquitous chattel slavery.
Some persons are inclined to look upon the evils following the war—dissolute legislation, moral turpitude, and political party profligacy, as neutralizing much if not the entire national benefits acquired at the enormous cost of the Rebellion. While it is possible, the corruption following in the wake of protracted wars with large armies may more than counterbalance the good accomplished by successful military achievements, it is to be hoped that the subjugation of southern rebels, giving freedom to millions of slaves, and showing to credulous monarchs the ability of a republic to coerce obedience to the constitution and laws, may ever for good outweigh the evils following the war that accomplished such everlasting benefits. That the laxity complained of has greatly increased within the last three decades can scarcely be questioned. Every department of the government has been more or less criticised for want of faithful performance. No department has perhaps suffered more in the confidence of the people than that political plum styled “The interior.”
The just and honorable cause for pensioningdisabled soldiers soon became merged into politics, and from head to foot the distance was made short from fact to fraud. Noah’s Ark did not exceed in variety with all the species of beasts, birds, and creeping things, that of the contents of the Pension Building with a single species of ex parte creation. Applications of all kinds, shapes, and forms. This has never appeared unsatisfactory to that unscrupulous, unmentionable, who is paid per head by the bureau for the art of filing claims. He knows by experience the wonderful ability of the institution and its consulting politicians to overcome objection and get the most angular cases through the hole that leads to the public treasury.
If stated, it would scarcely be believed that absolute fraud could find unrequited favor in an office devoted to the most deserving of the nation—cases as groundless as the following: After enlisting, asoldierchanged his mind, and when called upon to report forwarded a joint affidavit of himself and physician, in which was stated said soldier had before and at the date of enlistment permanent disabilities (naming them), which disqualified him for military service, and that he should have been rejected. (Soldiers at that date were sent forward without regulation examination.) Soldier received a discharge on the affidavit and was happy.
In due time an application was made under the arrears act, giving the diseases named in thejoint affidavit as having “occurred in the service in line of duty.” In days of honest administration, in looking up the history of the applicant in the War Office, the affidavit was found and placed with the file in the Pension Office.
This ended the case, and under several administrations it slept with attempts at fraud. Perseverance is said to be the road to success, and by the stimulant of contingent fees intercession was secured, and by management ofgoodlegal advice the case was placed in the hands of a “special examiner,” and went through without the loss of a dollar, securing a small fortune inarrears, but claiming the rating too low, and making immediate application forincrease.
It would seem improbable for the heads of the bureau not to know and fully understand some of the many instances of perjury and fraud that passed current through the office. It is the old rejected or suspended cases with large arrears that are attractive and arethoroughly investigatedfor new evidence. In this attempt parties generally receive the courteous assistance of those officially connected with the office. Even a medical referee has been known to show great interest in barefaced fraud, and give tips to aid in getting such through the bureau successfully. General Phil Sheridan, who was well informed in regard to the contents of the great Pension Office, was told the contents were safe, as the buildingwas fire-proof, and could never burn down, replied: “That would be my serious objection to it.”
Notwithstanding reports of corruption, fraud, avarice, and greed for public plunder, which may slow the advancing pace of civilization, there are enough common people to preserve the nation—people who worship not at the feet of the God of Aaron; poor people; people who pay legal tribute to the government; honest, stalwart standard-bearers of morality, intelligence, and patriotism; supporters of common-schools and churches; people who are ever watchful of the interests of the nation, protect the sanctity of the ballot-box, and direct the legal machinery for the protection of virtue and suppression of vice, possessingsaltwith the savor of moral honesty that passes current in business and social life.
The expressed will of the people is the law of the land. It has made and amended constitutions; by it black has become white; the bond free; slaves, citizens. It has erected monuments; built towns and cities; and in war and times of peace has accomplished much for the good of all. It has muzzled many of the national vices, and given civilization long strides in the right direction. And the spirit of the age should by law hasten the end of growing political struggles for place regardless of qualification.
It has become a matter of common report, and one that is generally believed, that successful applicants for office by the suffrage of the peopleare but seldom as much interested in the welfare of their constituents as they are in their own sycophantic obedience to selfish bosses, who, under party cover, willingly contribute of their wealth to perpetuate a party power that assures the gratification of their own greed for ill-gotten gain.
Qualification is recognized as essential by law, and lies at the foundation of civil and military service. State laws require that teachers of common schools furnish legal evidence of qualification for the position. The commander of an army must have a military education and qualification; so, too, every appointment made through the civil departments of the government, for a short distance up the base, requires of the applicant a certificate from a qualified board of censors, stating that said applicant is in all respects fitted to perform the duties of the position applied for. This is termedCivil and Military Service, and has been declared constitutional.
If so, why may not the people demand more? If a little civil service meted out to those filling subordinate positions is a benefit, why may not the like treatment be accorded to all candidates seeking national positions, by appointment or directly from the people? It is admitted that civil service is a matter of safety and efficiency in subordinate civil positions. If so, it is not unreasonable to suppose the salutary effects would be infinitely greater if applied to the more responsiblepositions. Education and qualification for all positions is the law of military government; and most certainly similar requirements might be made equally advantageous to the civil government. Military government could not long sustain existence without the service of prescribed regulations. The commanding general of the army obtains the high honor of the position from his education and certified ability, and efficiency as master of the science of war. The President of the United States, being over all as commander-in-chief, should be thoroughly versed in the civil and military, asMaster of the Science of Government, not only of our own, but that of every nation on earth.
There does not appear to be any sufficient reason why a government civil service should not exist and be as open to the election of coming generations as that of law, medicine, literary or other pursuits; and it is not saying a word too much to urge the necessity for an institution adapted to the civil as West Point is to the military power, where persons having taken the degree of A.M. may matriculate and qualify themselves for the civil service, and obtain a certificate of such qualification from the institution, having a prescribed curriculum, requiring four years of study to entitle one to examination for the honors of graduation.
Individuals highly educated in the science of government and the art of governing, fittedfor a field exclusively their own, would promote an agreement upon the complex questions that now agitate and endanger the peace of society by keeping at fever heat party differences that are magnified by designing politicians.
The high authority of the teachings of the court of instructions, would define the policy and give stability to the Government, and would remove party press for office by incompetency. It would also determine the exact relations between the several departments of the Government, especially how far the President has power to involve the country in war against the will of Congress by recognizing belligerency or independence in cases in which Congress refused such recognition.
As the nation increases in population and number of states, it requires increased wisdom and knowledge to rule and make the people prosperous and happy. The great central region lying between the Ohio river, Lakes and Mississippi will ever be theheartof the Republic. Within it are the life springs of three-fourths of our country’s whole area. Nowhere in the United States is there a basin of such vast extent, capable of feeding so great a population. “Hence its destiny is to hold the balance of power between East and West, hence it is truly regal.”[33]
When the first-born of the states of this greatbasin came into the Union (Ohio), it brought with its baptism the inauguration ofNational Internal Improvements—a policythat has enriched the nation by liberalityof expenditures, improving harbors, water-ways and roads, in building custom-houses, post-offices, and in assisting the states in many laudable undertakings, while like the miser, in all its vast wealth has been wearing old, unbecoming, unfashionable clothes and doing the business of the nation in rented and other ill-begotten shops, located here and there, as best suited real-estate sharks and speculators in a sickly city.[34]But the dawn of day is coming by which the people of the North-west now see it is high time the Government should make for itself a permanent home—a place of security for all the valuable records of the nation. A spot for the Governmentalone, called “The Capitol of the United States,” near the center of population controlling representation, free from private property. A capital with capacious senatorial, representative and judicial halls, contiguous to the several departments, with state dwellings for senators and representatives of the several states, and other necessary buildings, all to be ownedand controlled by the Government, each constructed with reference to the intended uses, large enough to accommodate an ordinary peaceable assemblage of American citizens, with room to spare.
The most celebrated speaker now living in America, on reciting a visit to the present capital during the sitting of Congress, states: “Another thing that impressed me was, that the hall of the House of Representatives was built in defiance of all laws of acoustics. There are more echoes than can be counted to play havoc with a speech, and turn the finest oratory into a senseless gabble.” A capital situated on the border of an inland sea, with large grounds, parks, lakes, lagoons, gardens, and fountains, in beauty all that art and nature is able to make one place on this continent fitly dedicated to the keeping of the charter of the best government on earth. And, then, if the crowned heads of the world have a desire to see the majesty of aRepublic, owned and preserved by the people, let them come and look upon “The Capital of the United States”—where just laws are made and interpreted alike forall the people.
A capital with the architectural requirements of so great a nation, bristling with “peacemakers” and afloatingnavy in sight, would increase American pride and attachment, and do more to advance the arts, sciences, and sound civilization than all other national improvements combined.It would “copy the Monroe Doctrine into international law,” and secure peace over the entire world.
The Squirrel HuntersofOhio and North-west will do it.Good Night.