The mode of doubling the battalion is simply to form a battalion of each half bat talion, a division of each platoon, a platoon of each section, etc., and fill up their ranks to the proper number, with a care to place the recruits in the second ranks.a In the proposed organization of the staff there were two defects, either of which was sufficient to insure its failure. The first was the neglect to provide in the grades of colonel, lieutenant-colonel, and major, the requisite number of officers to insure the uniform operation of each department. The second was the neglect to replace the captains and lieutenants detailed from the line, by the same number of supernumeraries. But for these defects and the additional omission to provide that in time of peace, all officers detailed from the line should return periodically to their companies, the plan of Mr. Calhoun, had it been adopted, would have given us all the advantages of the most modern staff organization. When, however, the plan was submitted to Congress, all its vital points were discarded and with no reference to the future the Army was reduced by the act of March 2, 1821, from an aggregate of 12,664 officers and men to 6,183. The first section of the law prescribed— That from and after the 1st day of June next the military peace establishment of the United States shall be composed of 4 regiments of artillery and 7 regiments of infantry, with such officers of engineers, of ordnance, and of the staff as are hereinafter provided for. e The second section made each artillery regiment consist of 1 light and 8 foot companies, with a field, staff, and noncommissioned staff composed of 1 colonel, 1 lieutenant-colonel, 1 major, 1 adjutant detailed · from the subalterns, 1 sergeant-major, 1 quartermaster-sergeant. To each regiment was attached 1 supernumerary captain to perform ordnance duty. Each company was composed of 1 captain, 2 first lieutenants, 4 second lieutenants, 4 sergeants, 4 corporals, 3 artificers, 2 musicians, 42 privates; total, 60; total regiment, 546. The same section made each infantry regiment consist of 10 companies, with a field, staff, and noncommissioned staff composed of 1 colonel, 1 lieutenant-colonel, 1 major, 1 adjutant detailed from the subalterns of the line, 1 sergeant-major, 1 quartermaster-sergeant, 2 principal musicians. Each company was composed of 1 captain, 1 first lieutenant, 1 second lieutenant, 3 sergeants, 4 corporals, 2 musicians, and 42 privates; total company, 54; total regiment, 547. The third section retained the engineer corps (bombardiers excepted) and the topographical engineers as already organized. The fourth section prescribed That the Ordnance Department shall be merged in the artillery, and that the President of the United States be, and he is hereby, authorized to select from the regiments of artillery such officers as may be necessary to perform ordnance duties, who, a American State Papers, vol. 2, p. 193. An act of Congress approved February 14, 1903, establishes a General Staff Corps to be composed of officers detailed from the Army at large, under such rules as may be prescribed by the President.-EDITORS. American State Papers, vol. 2, p. 194. d American State Papers, vol. 2, p. 452. e Callan's Military Laws of the United States, p. 306. while so detached, shall receive the pay and emoluments now received by ordnance officers, and shall be subject only to the orders of the War Deparment; and that the number of enlisted men in the Ordnance Department be reduced to fifty-six.a The fifth section reduced the general officers to one major-general and two brigadiers, and prescribed that their aids-de-camp, taken from the subalterns of the line, should perform, in addition to their other duties, those of assistant adjutants-general. The sixth section authorized 1 Adjutant and 2 Inspectors-General with the rank of colonel of cavalry. The seventh section prescribed that there should be 1 QuartermasterGeneral, 2 quartermasters with the rank of major, and 10 assistant quartermasters, detailed from the line, with an extra compensation of not less than $10 or more than $20 per month. The eighth section authorized 1 Commissary-General, and not exceeding 50 assistant commissaries, detached from the line, with the same compensation as the assistant quartermasters, and further prescribed that both the assistant quartermasters and assistant commissaries of subsistence, should be "subject to duties in both departments under the orders of the Secretary of War." The ninth section prescribed that there should be 1 Paymaster-General, 14 paymasters with the pay and emoluments of regimental paymasters, 1 commissary of purchases, and 2 storekeepers, attached to the purchasing department. This law, in failing to recognize the wisdom of Mr. Calhoun's advice "that at the commencement of hostilities there should be nothing either to new-model, or to create," insured the continuance of our previous system. It sought to make the staff efficient at the expense of the line, and while the President, in case of Indian wars could authorize generals and governors to call out unlimited numbers of militia, he could not add an enlisted man to the Army. Had Congress given him the authority to increase each company of artillery and infantry to 100 enlisted men, the reduction of the Army by one-half would still have enabled him in time of war to augment it to more than 11,000 men. The failure to provide permanent officers in the higher grades, and also that officers detached on the staff should be supernumeraries of the line, necessarily led, in the course of a few years, to the present organization of staff corps in which every officer, regardless of his qualifications, holds his position for life." The manner in which the present system was established may be illustrated by a reference to the ordnance. Instead of allowing 1 colonel and 1 lieutenant-colonel, 2 majors, and 7 captains of ordnance, as recommended by Mr. Calhoun, the whole department was ignored by the law, or at least replaced by the simple provision that "there should be attached to each regiment of artillery, one supernumerary captain to perform ordnance duty." At best these 4 captains, without a Callan's Military Laws of the United States, p. 307. An act of Congress approved February 2, 1901, provides that future vacancies in the lower grades of the Adjutant-General's, Inspector-General's, QuartermasterGeneral's, Subsistence, Pay, and Ordnance departments, and of the Signal Corps, shall be filled by the detail of officers of the line of the Army for a period of four years, at the completion of which period such officers detailed shall return to the line of the Army for two years before being eligible to further detail; and officers below the rank of lieutenant-colonel shall not be eligible to further detail in any staff department until they have served two years with the line.-EDITORS. any permanent chief, as in the Quartermaster or Commissary Departments, were to supply the place of an Ordnance Department, which had been created in 1812, and by the act of February 8, 1815, had been increased to a total of 44 officers. This deficiency in numbers was made up by the detail of about 30 officers of artillery, whose return to their regiments was secured by a provision of the Army Regulations, adopted after the passage of the law, requiring that a certain number of officers should be detailed annually on ordnance duty, in place of the same number relieved. The head of the new department, which in its composition had no element of permanency, was Colonel Bomford, the former Chief of Ordnance, who naturally opposed the new system. In a letter to the Secretary of War, dated January 8, 1827, he stated all the objections to this method of detail, and then recommended a separate department to consist of 1 colonel, 2 majors, 8 captains, 8 first lieutenants, and 8 second lieutenants, a total of 27 officers. But lest this recommendation should not be approved, he struck the happy medium between the system of permanency and detail by adding: If it shall, however, be considered expedient to continue, in part, the present system of details, I would then suggest that the Department be made to consist of 1 colonel, 2 majors, and 10 captains, leaving to be supplied by details from the artillery, as many lieutenants as the public service might require. In favor of this plan, it may be said that it can be effected by a smaller addition to the number of officers at present in service, as it would require only nine new appointments to be made; and also that the thirteen ordnance officers not being subject to change and the details being confined to the junior officers alone, neither the ordnance nor the artillery service would suffer much inconvenience by this arrangement, while the latter might be benefited by it. It is admitted that this plan would be greatly preferable to the present system, as it would give some degree of permanency to the senior officers of the Department, to those upon whom its duties and responsibilities would mainly rest. a January 23 he submitted to the Secretary of War a bill to carry out the above views which, had it become a law, would have increased the efficiency of both the artillery and ordnance and made our system in every essential particular approach the systems of other nations. In England, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia the ordnance officers are merely the staff of the artillery, who are specially selected from the whole corps for known zeal and efficiency. The Austrian general, Uchachius, the inventor of the celebrated steel bronze field gun, is an officer of artillery whose services can be utilized in time of peace in the arsenal, while in time of war his talents can find more important scope on the field of battle. In the arsenals, or technical departments of every foreign service, the officers, without any fixed rule as to the period of detached service, go back to the artillery, where the benefit of their scientific training is extended to the line. These advantages, to a great extent, were involved in the law proposed by the Chief of Ordnance more than fifty years ago, at an increased expense to the then existing peace establishment of but $11,644 per annum. November 30, 1829, the Chief of Ordnance, in his annual report, again recommended a separate corps, and December 18 followed it up by another letter reiterating all his former objections to the system of detail. This letter also recommended that in case the corps be a American State Papers, vol. 3, p. 580. still merged with the artillery, that at least the senior grades be made permanent, leaving the junior grades as before, to be filled by detail, a measure that "would combine the advantages of both plans." November 30, 1830," the same arguments were again presented to the Secretary of War, and were again alluded to on the 28th of October, 1831. As a result of constantly presenting the defects of a department which comprised but 4 supernumerary captains of artillery, Congress, on the 5th of April, 1832, reestablished the Ordnance Corps, to consist of 1 colonel, I lieutenant-colonel, 2 majors, and 10 captains. The lower grades were still to be filled by the detail of lieutenants of artillery. It was supposed that the allowance of four lieutenants to each battery of artillery, by the law of 1821, would permit a certain number to be detailed on ordnance duty without prejudice to their regiments, but as will appear during the Florida war, so great was the number of officers detached in the various staff departments, without supplying their places by supernumeraries, that both the line and the staff united in opposition to a system which could only insure efficiency in the one, at the expense of the other. Small as were the Quartermaster and Commissary Departments, the former consisting, under the law of 1821, of one chief and two other permanent officers, the latter of but one chief only, no such determined opposition was made to the principle of detail as was made by the Chief of Ordnance. This was in a great measure due to the fact that General Jesup, Quartermaster-General, and General Gibson, Commissary-General, were both former officers of the line, while Colone! Bomford, under whom the law of 1821 had to be carried into effect, was the deposed chief of a corps, for the reestablishment of which he could not fail to labor. The Quartermaster-General in 1823' and 1824 recommended an increase of his department by 3 quartermasters and 8 assistants, all of whom were to be detailed from the line with an increase of pay, and these recommendations were followed in 1826d by the addition of 2 quartermasters and 10 assistants, making a total of 5 permanent officers and 20 detailed from the line. In the Commissary Department, although all the labor under the direction of its chief was performed by the 50 officers detailed from the line, no recommendation was made by General Gibson for an increase of the department till 1827, when he requested the appointment of 2 majors. These officers were added to the department in 1829. The extent to which the staff labor of the Army was done by the line, between the year 1821 and the Florida war, may be easily inferred from the statement that in the two great supply departments just referred to, out of the 78 officers composing them, 70 were from the line. The efficiency with which these officers performed their duty was frequently the subject of commendation by their chiefs, while the varied and practical experience acquired in their departments, increased a American State Papers, vol. 4, p. 756. d Callan's United States Military Laws, sec. 4, p. 316. e American State Papers, vol. 3, p 645. their capacity and usefulness in every position to which the Government subsequently assigned them. This varied experience was, however, to be denied the line, through the failure to provide that officers detailed should be supernumeraries. RELATIONS OF THE GENERAL IN CHIEF AND SECRETARY OF WAR TO THE ARMY. The still undefined relations between these two officers, one of whom, under the President, should be the exclusive chief of the personnel of the Army, the other the absolute director of its administration, came before both Houses of Congress in 1828-29 on a proposition as to the expediency of abolishing the office of major-general of the Army, made vacant by the death of General Brown. This question, to which is referable much of the extravagance of our system; the unnecessary war between the staff and the line; the lack of the subordination due to the general in chief, from every staff officer not exclusively occupied in administration duties under the Secretary of War a question, which rising above all personal considerations must have an important bearing upon all future military operations, and through them, on the honor if not on the destiny of the country, was discussed with such enlightened statesmenship by a committee of the Senate and by the Secretary of War, that to-day their views are worthy of the special consideration of Congress. On the 19th of March, 1828, Mr. Harrison (afterwards President of the United States), from the Committee on Military Affairs, to whom was referred the resolution of the Senate, directing them to inquire into the expediency of continuing or abolishing the office of major-general in the Army of the United States, reported: The first inquiry now to be made is, whether the office of major-general, on the establishment, shall alone be abolished, leaving the organization and arrangement of the Army in other respects as it now is. If the object of this reduction is to save expense, the committee hesitate not to say that the expectation will not be realized. Indeed, it is possible that it may be increased. This effect is produced by the number of officers in every corps of the Army holding brevet rank of higher grade than they hold in the line, and by that succession in command which is an essential principle of discipline in every army and navy of the civilized world. The principle here spoken of is that which, upon the removal of a senior officer by death or otherwise, gives to the next in rank, not the rank, but the entire authority and command of the officer whom he succeeds. In a case of this kind, when the command devolves upon an officer of junior grade in the line, who holds no brevet rank, he receives no accession of pay or emolument for the exercise of the higher duty and increased responsibility. Upon the death, absence, or removal of the colonel of a regiment the lieutenant-colonel, or major in the absence of the lieutenant-colonel, succeeds to the command of the regiment and to all the authority which the colonel possessed without any increase of pay, if the officer thus succeeding holds no brevet rank; but having that rank it instantly comes into operation and brings with it the appropriate pay and emoluments. From this statement it will at once be perceived, that if the proposed reduction extends no further than to the office lately held by Major-General Brown, without any other change in the organization and arrangement of the Army, it will effect no diminution of the expense of the Army, but may possibly increase it. There could be then no motive, it is conceived from this view of the subject, to make the proposed reduction. But a change in the present arrangement of the Army might be made, either by law or under the authority of the President, so as to produce a saving to the Treasury, of the whole pay and emoluments of the office which it is proposed to abolish. This could be done by confining the two brevet major-generals to their present commands, marked out by geographical lines, and denominated the eastern and western department, and abolishing the office of major-general in the establishment, or general in chief, as proposed by the resolutions submitted to the committee. But |