of the Army has not demanded it—"the extent of pointment in the department is readily passed, country over which the Army is spread," which which would require reams of paper to explain if our late Secretary tells us should regulate the Staff, rendered by a young subaltern disconnected with has not demanded it-nor has the public service these "scientific corps," as they are modestly called demanded it. It is evident that Congress became by one of their own number in some recent publiinfatuated on the subject of our Staff in 1838 and cation. Again, if an officer of this department yielded to the importunities of an Army of office meets with the slightest difficulty in settling an seekers, whereby they destroyed the efficiency of account, he is forthwith ordered to Washington for the service and increased its expenditures so enor- the purpose of attending to it in person, and the mously, that the cry of extravagance has been government pays his expenses. Examine the reraised throughout the country, and efforts are now gister of arrivals in the Adjutant General's office being made to shift the responsibility from our for proof of this assertion. Our Army has about unwieldy and unnecessarily expensive Staff, where one half as many Staff officers as it has officers of it is and must rest, to the shoulders of the weak the line, and not more than one third as many of and oppressed line which has no friends at court, and no means of counteracting the influence brought to bear upon the minds of our legislators. The Quarter Master's Department is but one of the six Staff corps which received an impetus in 1838, which must and will lead to its downfall, or entire reorganization. Let us examine the additional expense to which this increase subjected the country in 1838. Previous to the acts of the 5th and 7th of July of that year, the department was organized as follows: 1 Brigadier General, pay and allowances 4 Majors 66 66 (Temporary appointments) 20 Asst. Qr. Masters, in addition to line pay 2 Store keepers, pay and allowances Total for pay, &c. of officers $3,600 the latter will be found visiting Washington, or any other attractive city, as there will be of the former. No small item in the expenditures of this department is thus made out. That the duties of the department are as satisfactorily and economically done at the different military posts by these officers of high rank and pay as it has been, and can be, by subalterns of these posts, I utterly deny and call on commanding offcers of posts to sustain me. Such has been my experience, and I have heard the opinion so often repeated, that I believe it to be universal. Some good and practical reasons existed at the time of this increase for a slight addition to the 7,200 department, and for a more perfect organization, 1,920 but at no time has the service required the unwieldy department which was created. The two principal reasons for this increase no longer exist. The Army has been again reduced to what it was before 1838, and the Florida war has died a natural death: let its offspring, an abortion, follow. $21,520 In 1844, the organization as allowed by existing $3,600 5,860 4.900 8,800 47.500 2,500 15,480 7,760 $96,400!!! It would seem natural, too, that the officers of the line should be excused from performing these duties after the creation by Congress of so large a corps for the express purpose; yet such is not the case-as many line officers now perform duties in this department as before the increase in 1838. We will find in our large cities and at some of our largest and most agreeable military posts an officer of this department, but in most instances you will find but little or nothing to do, or if there should Behold the result! An increase from twenty-one thousand five hundred dollars to ninety-six thou- be occupation, a subaltern of the line will be found sand four hundred dollars, and in the item of pay encumbered with the disagreeable duties, and the alone. Could I but form an estimate of the addi- Quarter Master living at his ease and only attendtional expense on account of office and clerk hire, ing to what agents and commission merchants office furniture, fuel for offices, transportation of would willingly do for the custom without compenthese officers from point to point for you find some sation. One half of our Army, or seven of the of them continually travelling, and never without fourteen Regiments are stationed west of the Misorders-the above sum would be increased beyond sissippi, but we find only ten out of thirty-two offione hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And cers in the Quarter Master's Department on duty where is the benefit resulting from it? I can sug- with that portion. There are but few very agreeagest but one. The department in Washington has ble posts West of the Mississippi, however, and less trouble in settling their accounts, and for two Lieutenants of the line can do the duty there; but in In the most of our Staff Departments it our large cities, on the seaboard, a Captain of is believed that the "crown can do no wrong," and cavalry at least is deemed necessary. The prean account rendered by an officer holding an ap-sence of officers of the Quarter Master's Depart reasons. ment is more necessary in the West, too, where all | Master is present as a sort of hook-and-eye judge works are put up by that department, as well for advocate. I recollect one of these occasions, defence as for accommodation, whereas on our when some alteration was expected in the form of seaboard both are done by the engineers. But the clothing, the commanding officer was present these are by no means the most serious evils attend- at the unpacking. When the drummers' jackets ing the present organization of that department. were produced, the commanding officer put the Twenty of the twenty-seven Captains now in that question to his Quarter Master, "what do you think department are taken from the heads of their com- of these, McB—?" "They are certainly very panies which are left in the hands of Lieutenants, handsome," was the reply; "but, Colonel, don't you many of them young and inexperienced, and but think there is a great deal too much tautology few possessing rank and age enough to make com- about the lace?" The word certainly would have petent company commanders. This system will applied with more force to drumsticks than to lace; break down any Army in the world, and especially but it was not a bad Quarter Masterish phrase, to our Army, where there is no stability in its Lieu- express his contempt for that superabundance of tenants. A company whose Captain is thus trans- frippery and gingerbread on the jackets of the drumferred to a Staff corps often changes commanders mers of the British Infantry, which make them several times in a year, and owing to the necessary look more like merry-andrews to a quack doctor, details for detached services from the subalterns, than heralds authorized to rouse gentlemen's sons I have often known companies in Florida without out of their beds before day-light. On active sera commissioned officer for months and even years. vice, the duties and responsibilities of the Quarter The place for a Captain is properly at the head of Master are much increased; he is here allowed his company, and no one of proper military pride money to purchase a horse, and forage for his will ever consent to leave that place; but the policy keep-an article indispensable to the journeys he of our government has been such as to destroy that is obliged to make. He requires to possess dilihigh military tone, without which an Army is worth-gence and activity, as well as a fair knowledge of less, by offering high pay and pleasant stations to the country and its roads, and to keep a sharp look officers for abandoning their appropriate duties and assuming those which foreign services seem to consider as beneath officers of scientific education and high standing, and as appropriate rewards for old and faithful non-commissioned officers. Upon this point I cannot more fully express my views than by an extract from the published opinions of a field officer in the British service. out that his supplies are in no danger from marauding parties of the enemy. He has occasionally to add the duties of commissary to his own; to provide the food, as well as to serve it out, which doubles his labor and anxiety. "In recompense for these, as well in regard to the trust committed to his charge, the pay of Quarter Master has been gradually raised to its present rate 6s. 6d. per diem; after ten years on full pay, to 8s. 6d. ; and fifteen years, to 10s. It is the best possible gift to a deserving non-commissioned officer, (generally the Quarter Master Sergeant,) more particularly if he is married and not obliged to live at the mess. In all the range of that of the Quarter Master; and no man in or out of the Army sits down to a more comfortable and plentiful Christmas dinner." "The Quarter Master is one of the earliest appointments in all standing armies; his name implies his duties—the distribution of quarters in barracks and cantonments, with the charge of all regimental camp equipage and baggage; but his functions and avocations are, besides these, numerous and various. He is the acknowledged chief of barracks, no room is found so snug and cozy as that little dirty-looking band that leads the van of every infantry regiment and looks like its gravediggers; but the Quarter Master is too modest to Place himself at its head. He is also the dictator A comparison with our service at a glance exof the regimental tailors and armorers, and the hibits the ascendancy which Staff influence has Rhadamanthus of the washerwomen. He is on gained over our legislation. Offices, which in the good terms with the Barrack Masters, hand and British service are considered as proper rewards glove with the corn and coal merchants of the town, for non-commissioned officers, are eagerly sought and is looked up to as a great man by the contract by our Captains, and he who obtains one is conbutcher and baker. He has a perfect knowledge sidered a lucky if not a favored man. The reason of every thing that goes to making up a soldier- is very plain. In the British service there is no arms, ammunition, clothing and accoutrements; rank attached to the appointment, and the pay is intimate acquaintance with the value of all the only commensurate with the duties performed and miscellaneous articles, packs, straps, buckles, shirts, the standing and respectability of the office. At shoes, &c., even down to a soldier's millinery; no time is the pay of a Quarter Master increased bis eap, plate and tuft; his combs, his razors, his beyond seventy-five dollars per month, and it is only brushes, pipe-clay and blacking. At those solemn fifty dollars to those first entering the service. In meetings called Clothing Boards, consisting gene- our service an officer is selected, generally some rally of the three oldest Captains, the Quarter favorite, for promotion. The appointment of As VOL. X-32 out military rank, and to be stationed at the post occupied by the greatest part of his regiment. At other posts have the duties performed as they now are by the Lieutenants and Assistant Commissaries. The department, thus organized, would be more efficient than the present and will cost the country one hundred thousand dollars a year less. When on active service in the field, allow these officers the use of a public horse and forage to keep him, and in barracks place them on a footing with Pay Masters and Medical officers in regard to rank; allow the Quarter Masters to assimilate with Majors, and the Regimental Quarter Masters with Captains. sistant Quarter Master confers on him the rank of one regimental Quarter Master to each regiment a Captain in the Army with the pay and allowances with the pay of one thousand dollars a year, withof a cavalry officer of the same grade, at no time less than one hundred and fifteen dollars per month, and by the addition of a ration every five years, it increases in the same ratio as in the British service. The duties of a Quarter Master in our service are the same as those in the British, and I am unable to discover a reason for giving additional rank and pay to commissioned officers in our service-men of scientific education-for performing duties which more appropriately belong to the capacity and grade of non-commissioned officers, and which are performed by men of that standing and capacity in the British service. In that service, too, we see that a Quarter Master is supplied with a horse and forage for him when on "active service." In our Army the lowest grade in the Quarter Master's Department, a Captain, is allowed forage for three horses when in garrison, where his duties do not even afford exercise. The Quarter Master General is fully aware of the necessity for a change in his department, and recommends one which would be far preferable to the present organization, though it would be more costly, and I think less efficient than the one I propose. The strongest proof that he considers his department too large, and that there is too much rank in it, is to be found in the fact, that vacancies are permitted to remain unfilled when applicants can be found by the hundred anxious to accept. Confide the administration of his depart ment to hands less considerate of the public good and more anxious to reap the benefits from patronage, and the expenses will again rise beyond the reduction of thirty thousand dollars which he tells you has been effected. I deem it utterly unnecessary to offer further reasons in support of my opinions against the present organization of our Quarter Master's Department, and must delay for a future number a few remarks on the unequal, unjust and unprecedented anomaly of allowing officers to hold two commissions at the same time, with the privilege of exercising the rank and authority conferred by either at their discretion, and to receive promotion in two different corps. This system is particularly unjust to those officers who hold but one commission and who consider that military duty is more honorable The Quarter Master General in his last annual than that which renders it necessary for them to report, says; "the great object of supporting a be "hand-and-glove with the corn and coal mer-peace establishment is to prepare for war. One chants of the town," and to act as hook-and-eye of the most efficient means of preparation is an able judge advocates to Clothing Boards." And the and well-instructed Staff, at all times ready for esprit du corps of any Army must be destroyed by a system which throws grey haired veterans of twenty years' hard service upon boards and courts martial as the juniors of men who but yesterday looked up to them for counsel, advice and instruction, and who have thus early overreached them by no other merit than ability to write up neat and legible accounts, purchase hay, corn, oats, lumber, &c., with facility, and, above all others, the possession of influential friends at court. 66 action. When the establishment is small, and raw troops have in consequence to be employed on every emergency, it is important that as many officers as possible be qualified for Staff duties. With that object in view I respectfully suggest such a modification of existing laws as shall require all Staff officers holding regimental appointments to be returned periodically to their regiments, and their places in the Staff to be supplied by others. Were such a measure authorized the Captains and To remedy these abuses will require a very sim- subalterns of the whole Army would, in a few ple act of Congress. Repeal the law of 1838, so years, receive competent instruction in all that far as it relates to the Quarter Master's Depart-relates to the Staff, and acquire habits of business ment, and reestablish it upon an entirely different which would render them doubly efficient and valuaplan. Give us the same able and distinguished ble to the country in time of war." Quarter Master General who now presides over I agree with the distinguished General at the the department, with five or, at most, six Quarter head of that department as to the "object of a peace Masters without military rank, and with a salary of establishment," and I also believe with him, that one thousand five hundred dollars a year each; one "one of the most efficient means of preparation is of them to superintend the clothing bureau in Phila- an able and well-instructed Staff, at all times ready delphia, the others to perform the duties now done for action." Supposing that he refers to his own by the Colonels, Lieutenant Colonels and Majors department in these remarks, I must take issue of the department. In addition to these, give us with him on the propriety of forming this Staf by detailing officers from the line. There can be officer. Let these young officers remain with their no object in instructing these line officers in Staff companies and superintend these duties when reduties, preparatory to war, unless it is intended to quired in addition to their military duty, and they put them in Staff Departments when that crisis will be as competently instructed in all that relates arrives. If such be his intention, I will answer to the Staff, and have "acquired habits of business" his argument by a simple question. If the officers which would render them not exactly "doubly ef are taken from the line to form Staff corps in time ficient and valuable," but competent to perform of war, where will he find others to supply their duty in Staff Departments when required; the places in the line? It has been considered in all Army will not have lost their military services duservices before ours that the Staff was merely an ring their Staff educations-they will not be unappendage to the line, an evil it is true, but a ne- suited for military duty, as Staff officers generally cessary one to enable the line, the Army, to ope-are-and the country will not be subjected to the rate with facility and celerity. But now, and for expense of one hundred thousand dollars a year the first time since the first organization of armies, for effecting what can be better done without cost. we hear it gravely asserted, that the line of the The line will protest against the suggestion of Army in a peace establishment is to be kept up to the Quarter Master General being adopted so as to educate Staff officers, and those, too, who are ap-require them to perform duty in his department pointed, in foreign services, from the deserving sol- periodically and to be relieved from military duty diers. The fact is, that our Army has so long remained under Staff control, that it has become a settled principle that the line is only an appendage to the Staff, a sort of preparatory school for Staff officers. Whenever a vacancy occurs, and is to be filled, the chief of the department selects from the line, and his choice is confirmed:-thus The line is a bundle of hay," &c. for that time. A large majority of the officers of the line will never consent to perform duties so totally at variance with their education and habits, though they will not object to superintend those duties in addition to their appropriate professional ones. They enter the Army as military men, and not to become coal and pork merchants, or muster carpenters; nor will they ever consent to any law or regulation converting them into drivers of mules, or slayers of bullocks. On one other ground will this be strongly opposed. Past experience has The education of our young officers is not cal- convinced the majority of our line officers, that culated to make them Quarter Masters and Com- those who have been removed from military assomissaries, nor was the Military Academy ever in- ciations and educated in the Staff, are forever tended to educate such men; it gives a military afterwards fit for nothing else; and when returned and scientific education, to fit young men for mili- to their proper positions, (fortunately for the line tary duty in the Army, and not for corn, coal, or they seldom are,) they are only fit to play the fawnpork merchants. Men competent and willing to ing sycophant to some weak and superannuated fill these offices can be found in every grocery- commander, as they seldom fail to become profistore and counting-house in the country, without cients in the subtle art of pleasing in high places, subjecting the government to the expense of edu- and generally know the proper proportion of moeating them. A parallel is not to be found in any dest assurance necessary to secure desired ends. profession in life. Look to the Navy. Do we It is a common remark in our service, that “Capever find a commissioned officer in that service tain and Lieutenants and are very detailed to perform the duties of Purser in order to inefficient company officers, but nothing more can accomplish him in Staff duties? The duties of be expected of them as they are Staff men." Shall Parser are very similar to those of Quarter Master we all be reduced to this unenviable condition? including those of Pay Master in the Army. A SUBALTERN. A SONNET.-MY LADY'S ABSENCE. The object to be obtained by the periodical Who of himself, sweet youth and nothing more, Sad as the autumn, when there blooms no tree ;- Such in thine abscene, love! my home must be ; Since last, my Lady bright, I gazed on thee! R. GOSSIP ABOUT A FEW BOOKS. MR. MESSENGER : see the glorious works I have mentioned, shoved aside or overlaid by the trash I alluded to? It excites mine. How wroth it makes me, to enter a bookstore, and on asking for Sandford and Merton, the Parents' Assistant, Popular Tales, or any other of the inimitable Miss Edgworth's productions, or those of Miss Sedgwick, or Evenings at Home, or Sargeant's Temperance Tales, to be told they are not there, and to have Peter Parley, or Mary Howitt, or Sir Lytton Bulwer, or a dozen besides, too new and poor to be named, pushed in my face! I always long to serve such a bookseller as Alcibiades is reported by Plutarch once to have servWho can have written the little book called ed a schoolmaster in Athens. You remember Al"Conquest and SELF-CONQUEST?"* I met with cibiades-young, handsome, rich and spoiled, so it lately in a Richmond bookstore; and read it with that he could take strange liberties with every a delight that no book of its class has inspired me body. He entered a school one day, and asked with, since Sandford and Merton, The Parents' the teacher for Homer's works. "I have them Assistant, Popular Tales, and the best of Miss Sedgwick's juvenile narratives. Amid the numberless and worthless tomes of trash that have in recent times superseded those glories of English Literature just named, it is meat and drink to one who relishes an exquisite blending of the sweet with the useful, to find such a treat as this "ConConsidering the incredible multitude of books, and quest and Self-Conquest." It is a story of an other kinds of reading, that are hourly crowding inte American boy, who, after an early education at the world, the great aim of all except first rate home, under the eye of a judiciously fond mother, geniuses should be, methinks, to direct the publie went, at 11 years of age, to a grammar-school mind continually to the acknowledged standards of fought, was beaten,-grew stronger in body and excellence, and divert public favor from inferior principles, won the heart of his adversary,works. The classics of our language should live tered the Navy,—and there in a career of virtue perpetually in the critic's page; and his stiletto* and honor, proved how unnecessary vice or fero- should be busy in exterminating the insect swarms, city is, to a high place among the sons of maritime which every day brings forth, and which a day, glory. Except Miss Edgworth and the author of thank Heaven! for the most part consigns to obliSandford and Merton, I do not know a writer who vion-and so saves him the trouble. And if our has so happily portrayed true heroism. I pray periodicals would copy ten times what they do, you, tell me who she is? A woman, certainly from the great Masters, and exclude nine-tenths of as well from the delicacy of some turns and the so-called "original" matter they publish,―at touches, impracticable to a man, as from one or least one reader would be very much obliged to two slight incoherences, which his more mathe-them. - -en not," said the pedagogue. "Have n't got Homer!" replied Alcibiades: "then take that!"-and gave him a rousing box o' the ear, before all his scholars. I am very much inclined to treat parents in the same way, who confess that they are without the same books. matical nature would have avoided. Thus, in Dickens. His new assault upon our country, in September or October, 1811, a certain adventure the January number of the Foreign Quarterly Reoccurs (p. 61): eighteen months afterwards, is view,† is the most venomously spiteful that he has another incident: and then (p. 105) the succeeding made. Yet it has a pungency that tickles,-a March is in 1812, not long before our last war!- frequent happiness of expression that strikes and At least one other inaccuracy might be found, by pleases,―amid all the injustice, and the still greater a person who chooses to hunt out a bit of chaff in malignity in which it abounds. Nor is it always a bushel of wheat. Whoever does it will surely unjust. Though, upon the subject of slavery, and deserve, like him of old, to be rewarded with the its incidents, Mr. Dickens exaggerates and falsichaff for his pains. The book seems in the main, fies more than Mrs. Trollope, or any travelling above the powers of my favorite, Miss Sedgwick: book-wright since, and approaches the brutal injusyet it contains a vulgarism to which I grieve to tice of Parkinson, Fidler, and the other early tousay she is addicted-the transitive verb to leave, rists who slandered us,—yet, to much that he says used without expressing its object: thus, (p. 93) on other topics, our plea ought to be "guilty." "readiness to leave whenever," &c. Fie, fie, Boastfulness about our country,-excessive thirst Mrs. Nameless! for money,-a consequent neglect of many useful * Is not t'other end of the stylus called stiletto? Of course I do not mean an assassin's dagger. Does it not excite your ire, Mr. Messenger, to *Conquest and Self-Conquest; or, Which makes the Hero?" pp. 216, 12 mo. |