If full, this
would make thirty-four thousand men, or, including officers, thirty-five
thousand. So that, if the regiments were full, there is at this moment a
number of troops, regular and volunteer, of not less than fifty-five or
sixty thousand men, including recruits on the way. And with these twenty
thousand men in the field, of regular troops, there were also ten
thousand volunteers; making, of regulars and volunteers under General
Scott, thirty thousand men. The Senator from Michigan knows these things
better than I do, but I believe this is very nearly the fact. Now all
these troops are regularly officered; there is no deficiency, in the
line or in the staff, of officers. They are all full. Where there is any
deficiency it consists of men.
Now, Sir, there may be a plausible reason for saying that there is
difficulty in recruiting at home for the supply of deficiency in the
volunteer regiments. It may be said that volunteers choose to enlist
under officers of their own knowledge and selection; they do not incline
to enlist as individual volunteers, to join regiments abroad, under
officers of whom they know nothing. There may be something in that; but
pray what conclusion does it lead to, if not to this, that all these
regiments must moulder away, by casualties or disease, until the
privates are less in number than the officers themselves.
But however that may be with respect to volunteers, in regard to
recruiting for the regular service, in filling up the regiments by pay
and bounties according to existing laws, or new laws, if new ones are
necessary, there is no reason on earth why we should now create five
hundred new officers, for the purpose of getting ten thousand more men.
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