Re-enlistment

“ They afford the cheering hope that our resources, limited as they were at the beginning of the contest, will, during its progress, become developed to such an extent as fully to meet our future wants.
The policy of enlistment for short terms, against which I have steadily contended from the commencement of the war, has, in my judgment, contributed, in no immaterial degree, to the recent reverses which we have suffered, and even now renders it difficult to furnish you an accurate statement of the army. ”

“ However, many of them, and perhaps the greater part, were proud to belong to such an organization, and few seemed willing to yield the honor of being a member of Company C.
Re-enlistment.
The question of a three-years enlistment was a very serious one. A college course begun or nearly completed, good prospects of life beginning to open—these must be given up. Many doubted the wisdom of such a course of [Pg 9] action, and returned to their homes or to the college, to do good or to complete their outfit for usefulness in a less belligerent occupation. ”

“ During this period, the officers used all their influence to induce re-enlistments as veterans, and, as a result, some three hundred or more of the best men in the regiment signified their willingness to sacrifice anew their comfort and safety, their prospects in life, and life itself, if necessary, in the service of their country, if perchance, by such a sacrifice the blessings which they and their fathers had enjoyed, and by which the world had so largely benefited, might be transmitted to future generations. ”

“ However, yesterday Captain Mitchell relieved Captain Grinton in command of the post. The reserve companies fell in line to hear the orders of the War Department, concerning veteran volunteers. They produced quite an excitement among us. The three years' enlistment of a large portion of the army is nearly expired, and the Government, in its anxiety to avail itself of the experience of the veteran troops to the end of the conflict, is now offering extra inducements, in the way of furloughs and bounties, to secure the reënlistment of these men to the end of the war. ”

“ It is obviously so in the case of conscription; but under a system of voluntary enlistment, though the individual soldier cannot say that he in particular has been compelled by the government to risk his life, it is still the case that the state compels the risk of a certain number of lives. It decrees that an army of such a size shall be raised, though if it can get the men by voluntary hiring it does not exercise compulsion on the men of a particular age, and it sends the army into the field. ”

“ While it has nothing to do with training, there is another provision that should be in the enlistment law; that is, that every man who enlists for five years, and is in service when war breaks out, shall be liable for service for at least one year thereafter no matter when his term expires. At the outbreak of a great war is no time to discharge trained men. ”

“ Applicants for enlistment who have been accepted provisionally, but have yet to be subjected to the final examination at the recruiting depots and to take the oath before they become a part of the soldiery of the nation, are not 'troops of the United States.' It is the actual enlistment, the oath of allegiance, that changes the status from a civilian to soldier. ”

“ It passes human belief that our muddle-headed mistakes should be repeated and made more glaring by a return to short-term enlistments so appalling in the Revolution. But that is exactly what Congress did, by reducing the term of enlistment from five years to 18 months. As a further and ghastlier joke the President was empowered to require the governors of the States to hold in readiness to march at a moment’s notice a detachment of militia not exceeding 80,000 officers and men. The trouble is that such militia marched backwards much more fluently than they ever advanced forward. ”

“ To you, as practical business men, I will merely repeat this one statement—a statement the truth of which is known to every experienced soldier—that so long as the Territorial Force is based on voluntary enlistment, it is impossible to give its members a sufficiently lengthy and continuous period of training to insure a discipline which will stand the severe test of modern war. ”

“ By this time their force is so divided between Staten Island, Long Island, New York, Paulus Hook, and Bergen Point, that I think they will do no great matter more this fall, unless the expiration of the term of enlistment of our army should disband it. If our new enlistment fill up for soldiers during the war, we shall do well enough. Everybody must encourage this. ”

“ The difficulties of maintaining the army were unabated. 'All my accounts,' he wrote in April 1782, 'respecting the recruiting service are unfavourable; indeed, not a single recruit has arrived to my knowledge from any State except Rhode Island, in consequence of the requisitions of Congress in December last.' He strongly urged the impossibility of recruiting the army by voluntary enlistment, and recommended that, in addition to the compulsory enrolment of Americans, German prisoners should be taken into the army. ”

“ Enough has, perhaps, been said of the unpopularity of military service, and of the obvious causes thereof, to make it credible that, had the system of conscription never been resorted to in Europe, and the principle of voluntary enlistment remained intact and universal, the difficulty of procuring the human fighting material in sufficient quantities would in course of time have rendered warfare impossible. ”

“ It being no longer practicable to engage soldiers by voluntary enlistment, and government not daring to force men into the service for three years, or during the war, the vacant ranks were scantily supplied with drafts for nine, twelve, and eighteen months. A great proportion of the troops were discharged in the course of each year; and, except that the old officers remained, almost a new army was to be formed for every campaign. ”

“ Numbers who have purchased their discharge, having a good home and livelihood in civil life, enlist again, and remain soldiers for the full period of their service.
I may here state, that whatever time a soldier has served prior to purchasing his discharge, that time does not count in his favour on second enlistment: he has still twenty-four years to serve in the cavalry and twenty-one years in the infantry, from the date of his second or any subsequent enlistment. ”

“ The record of National Guard enlistments has not yet been completely compiled, [302] but the act authorizing a temporary increase in the military establishment provided that any deficiency remaining in either the Regular Army or the National Guard should be made up by selective conscription. The introduction of this new method of enlistment so far affected the whole question of selection for military service that any deductions, either favorable or unfavorable, from the number of voluntary enlistments, would be unwarranted. ”

“ For while the demands which modern war makes have increased in every direction, the term of service has been shortened in order to make enlistment in very great numbers possible. Thus the full consummation of military training cannot be attained unless recruits enter the army well equipped physically and mentally, and bringing with them patriotic sentiments worthy of the honourable profession of arms. ”

“ The personnel must be maintained by voluntary enlistment for terms of twelve consecutive years, the number of discharges before the expiration of that term not in any year to exceed 5 per cent of the total effectives. ”

“ I must sincerely hope that the old and constitutional mode of calling out the good and true men of the nation to serve in the militia regiments will never be abandoned, and I yet trust to seeing it extended, as I have proposed, to the Guards and regular army. Surely I have shewn plainly enough the evils of our present recruiting system to dissipate the notion of extending it to the militia. I [Pg 101] have long entertained a dislike to the plan of enlistment, unless every possible inquiry were made into the characters of the men who offered themselves as recruits ”

“ That Act as passed by Congress provided that 'no part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1938, shall be available for the payment of enlistment allowance to enlisted men for reenlistment within a period of three months from date of discharge as to reenlistments made during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1938, notwithstanding the applicable provisions of sections 9 and 10 of the Act' approved June 10, 1922. ”

“ Where the enlistment contract provides for service in the event of 'a mobilization or emergency,' I would assume that a wide variety of events might encompass each term. Indeed the very summoning of reserves to active duty might itself be sufficient to constitute the condition subsequent. ”

“ All compulsory military service is to be abolished in German territory, and recruiting regulations on a voluntary basis are to be incorporated into the German military laws, providing for the enlistment of non-commissioned officers and men for a period of not less than twelve consecutive years, and stipulating that officers shall serve for twenty-five years, and shall not be retired until the age of forty-five. ”

“ With the majority of the rank and file, the army is, in all likelihood, not a profession of choice. Enlistment is now scarcely ever voluntary. When men are required for a new regiment or to fill companies thinned by death or desertion, a sergeant is despatched with his guard to recruit among the Indians and peons of the neighborhood. ”

“ More men were anxious to enlist than there were places for and a hard problem for [20] the company officers to face was that of discouraging and rejecting applicants for enlistment most of whom pleaded for the privilege as strongly as a ward politician does for a paying office. ”

“ To this view officers and men alike objected, many of them so strongly that whole companies refused duty. They were within their lawful rights, yet, better counsels quickly prevailing, all consented to stay, and did good service to the last. Of seven other regiments the term of enlistment was on the point of expiring. They were the 21st, 22d, 24th, and 26th Maine, the 52d Massachusetts, the 26th Connecticut, and the 16th New Hampshire. ”

“ The re-enlisted drill instructor will not accompany the men of the new army into the field, and, as an army increases, a relative increase must be made in the number of its non-commissioned officers, while there are also vacancies by the hundred for commissioned officers. For the average man, however, it is useless at the present time to depend on influence and back-door methods for promotion. Worth is all that will count, and an ounce of enlistment to-day is worth a ton of influence that might have been exercised yesterday. ”

“ Europe was now in sympathy with the President’s assertion of the national authority, but it would be well to let her perceive that the United States government, to which she sent her envoys, had the stronger battalions. Furthermore, if the excellent men, who had volunteered for three months, were to be used at all in active service, they must soon take the field, as their term of enlistment was fast drawing to a close. ”

“ So on the 3rd of May President Lincoln issued a call for United States volunteers to serve three years, unless sooner discharged. At once thousands of loyal men sprang to arms—so large a number, in fact, that many regiments raised were refused until later.
The methods by which these regiments were raised were various. In 1861 a common way was for some one who had been in the regular army, or perhaps who had been prominent in the militia, to take the initiative and circulate an enlistment paper for signatures. ”

“ For instance, when the law allowing relief from jury duty and the partial remission of assessment, to continue during life, was amended to cover terms of enlistment only, the Adjutant General of the State decided the amendments applied to prior enlistments, thereby breaking a contract between the State and enlisted men under the old law. But when the term of service was reduced from seven to five years, enlistments under the former law were held for the longer term. It is in such a spirit that all amendments are interpreted in favor of the State and against the individual. ”

“ In practice the normal terms are seven years' colour service and five years' reserve service for the infantry, with certain modifications in the case of other arms. Enlistment may be made for general service or for a particular corps, and in the latter case the recruit will be posted to that corps only, and will ordinarily spend his whole service in it. A man desiring to enlist should present himself at a recruiting office, where he will be given a notice setting forth the terms of service. ”

“ The effectiveness of this method of enlistment can best be judged by the fact, officially verified, that commissions had been issued to the officers of fifteen regiments, they having at that time the proper complement of men. It could not be expected, under the conditions that prevailed, that an army so hastily gotten together and formed from small local organizations, totally unused to acting in masses under any military system as regiments or brigades, should have presented, either in the matter of discipline or equipment, anything that would commend itself to the trained military man. ”