RECRUITING AS IT WAS.
We take the following, on the subject of recruiting, with its light and
shadows as viewed by him. Whatever of good or evil was entailed in his
regulations, with him the responsibility rested. He says, “On entering
this service, there was no guide, no precedent; but every one, however
ignorant, assumed and pursued a course, in many instances, unjust to
the recruit, and detrimental to the service, and at once dishonorable,
but subservient to his own selfish ends. This was apparent, and at
once made the object of attention. For instance, the Fifty-fourth
Massachusetts Volunteers were raised by special provision by the
citizens or private contributions, as was understood, allowing each
enlisted man fifty dollars bounty, which at that time was twenty-five
dollars more than was being given by most of the states, perhaps by any
other state. It was then understood the bounties of the Fifty-fourth
were not appropriated by the state funds. The states which afterwards
raised colored troops did so from state appropriations. Rhode Island,
being the next to Massachusetts in this movement, appropriated three
hundred dollars bounty to the men.” It was in the service of the latter
state he acknowledged receiving the experience necessary to comprehend
the entire system of recruiting. “For,” said he, “in the service of
Massachusetts, I was employed under my distinguished friends, Charles
L. Remond and C. H. Langston, Esqs. My duty was to receive and execute
orders and instructions, not to give them. In the Rhode Island service,
being engaged to manage, my position and duties were quite different.
“The states which gave colored troops to the service made special
arrangements for recruiting them, for the simple reason that
necessarily a great part of them had to come from other places than the
state which organized them. The provisions made for recruiting white
soldiers could not be successfully applied in the case of the colored.
“These were points of importance,--of great importance,--because they
involve principles of justice to all concerned.
“Rhode Island, for instance, paid two hundred and fifty dollars bounty
to the men in raising the heavy artillery, leaving a residue of fifty
dollars for all expenses incurred--salaries of officers, agents,
sub-agents, subsistence of recruits till mustered in, transportation--a
heavy item of expense, when it is remembered that the greater portion
of these men were from the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri,
where the agents had actually to go to get them, and when obtained
in Kentucky and Missouri, for the most part, it cost from ten to
twenty-five dollars each to get across the river to the Indiana or
Illinois side. It will be readily understood, by an experienced
business man or financier, that these immense expenses could not be
kept up and the recruits be justly dealt with.
“Again, Connecticut appropriated three hundred dollars bounty to
the men, and I was probably the first who received an appointment,
by contract, to manage her recruiting in the Western States. The
first proposition in meeting the military authorities was to fix the
bounties, impressing upon the gentlemen the fact that bounties, being
merely awards, were large or small, according to circumstances; that
all freedmen who voluntarily presented themselves for enlistment, it
follows, should and would receive the three hundred dollars, because no
extra or special expenses were incurred. All who had to be subsisted,
and sent from the West in Indiana and Illinois, should receive two
hundred and fifty dollars, and in all cases where slaves would have to
be obtained in the slave states, with all the risks and expenses, one
hundred dollars was ample pay. When such men as the brave Voglesang,
the intrepid Lennox, and the sons of Frederick Douglass, and my
own son, received but fifty dollars, regarding it as ample, their
patriotism inducing them to join without bounty. Besides this, those
recruited from the slave states received their liberty _de facto_,
which they never would have attempted without our agency.
“This I considered justice, and so established it as a system of
recruiting. If there had not been a dollar, instead of being a
hundred, to give as a bounty to a single slave, or to the sons of the
distinguished Douglass, and my own, I should have acted as I did--put
my own son in the army, endeavor to get the bondman in, for the purpose
of overthrowing the infamous system of slavery and the rebellion.
“On returning from Connecticut, I consulted my distinguished friend,
the Rev. Mr. Garnet, in regard to the system I had adopted, of which he
highly approved, as ‘_coming from ourselves, concerning ourselves_.’
“All this, however, neither covers, defends, nor tolerates in any
degree the reprehensible and most shameful impositions continually
practised, by various methods of deceptions under the pretext of
recruiting. What I defend is a legitimate system laid down, to be
strictly conformed to the letter. Whatever was promised to the recruit
he should have received, and this should have been fixed and enforced
by the proper authorities, and not left optional with a stolid set of
human brokers.”