Second. The number of skulkers under details is also very large. Every post is full of them. The Quartermaster, Commissary, Ordnance, Medical, and Post Departments are full even to repletion. These details are generally young and healthy. I have been ordered to send this class to the Army. How can I effect it? I approach a detail to every appearance sound, and he thrusts into my face a certificate of disability. The disease is occult, the name scarcely known to me. He looks strong enough to brain an ax with his knuckle and eat him afterward. I have the prima facie evidence of my seances against the prima facie evidence furnished by the certificates. I can act earnestly, but I act blindly. I have asked for a medical officer to accompany me in the discharge of this duty. My request has not been granted. I believe the medical profession as free from corruption as any other officers. The improvement in this department has been wonderful during the past two years. Still they are human. It is an erroneous policy to force the question of fitness of details at a post upon the surgeons there. They are dependent upon the quartermaster there for home, office, fire, pay, clothing, and transportation, and receive from the commissary the food that feeds them. They would be less or more than human could they listen without prejudice to the petition of these officers for details, backed by assurances that they know the subject to be suffering from nearly "every ill that flesh is heir to. " I could correct the evil could I see through the eyes of an intelligent physician not subject to these influences.

Third. Large numbers of supernumerary and unnecessary officers are found everywhere. Posts are created for them to fill. Each little town in the State has its commandant of post, its conscript officer, its adjutants, its guards; in a word, its little army around it.

One of these officers could perform the duty of the whole. Send

off the others, and more than a regiment of troops will brmy from this source in this State alone. When an officer becomes wholly worthless in the front he is sent as a curse to fill some post in the rear.

For a time, as you know I filled the position of adjutant-general for one of our armies. Necessity compelled the consolidation of regiments occasionally. Whenever this occurred, I sent for the commanding officers, and selecting the best of their subordinates for the field, I scattered the worst to the rear. They could not be forced into the ranks; to permit them to remain with the Army was only to retain a class who could cause mischief in producing discontent at orders which circumstances rendered imperative. They are wandering through the land, worthless to the country and reflecting discredit on the service. Send them to the ranks. Displace young, healthy, lazy quartermasters and commissaries by disabled officers in the field.

Fourth. There is another great evil in all the States. Congress has passed severe laws against the employment of able men by quartermasters and commissaries. This law is evaded not only by false certificates of disability, but by equally false certificates on the part of officers that these employes are indispensably to them, and details are thereupon made by the Secretary of War. The number of these details is very large, and the facility with which these certificates are given is wonderful. I have seen many disabled officers and privates well qualified to discharge these duties refused employment to screen a useless favorite the field. These are some of the

62 R R-SERIES IV, VOL III