William Schouler, A history of Massachusetts in the Civil War: Volume 2

[15] paid. The amounts offered by each did not materially vary, although each fixed its own without consulting the others, and without their knowledge. The votes only show how nearly of one mind the towns were. Recruiting began with much earnestness, and in less than sixty days the whole number was obtained. While in the midst of recruiting the fifteen thousand three-years men, another order was issued by the President on the 4th of August, calling for three hundred thousand men for nine months service, supplemented with the information that, if not furnished within a comparatively short time, a draft would be resorted to. Of these men Massachusetts was to furnish nineteen thousand and eighty. Thus on two separate calls, issued within four weeks of each other, Massachusetts was asked to furnish without delay thirty-four thousand and eighty men. Before either of these calls was made, Massachusetts had furnished thirty-five thousand men for the military service, and twelve thousand for the navy, making an aggregate of forty-seven thousand men already in the service; and what bore with peculiar hardship upon Massachusetts and other maritime States was, that no account was taken of and no credit given for the men in the navy. So that we had to furnish our full proportion of men for the military service, and at the same time man the navy with seamen, for whom we obtained no credit or allowance whatever; and this injustice continued until July 4th, 1864, when an act passed Congress allowing the men in the navy, who had enlisted since April, 1861, to be counted into the contingent of a State to which they belonged, and in which they had enlisted. By this act of tardy justice Massachusetts was credited with twenty-two thousand three hundred and sixty men (22,360).¹ It is not surprising therefore that, in order to enlist our proportion of nine-months men in August, 1862, the bounties could not be diminished in proportion to the shortness of the term of service required. About one in fifteen of the entire population of the Commonwealth were already in either the military or naval service of the country, and now we were to add upwards of nineteen thousand to the number. To this additional demand