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it poor policy for Massachusetts to become a needless competitor in the gold market, and thus help to increase the inflation.
The letter concluded as follows:—
When we get ready to issue our six per cent currency bonds, I think I must take hold of the thing myself. . . . I want, if I can, to find out the best method of feeling and of manipulating the market; the best agency for modus operandi of popularizing the loan, and getting it rapidly absorbed, and to endeavor to impress the treasury personally both with snap and with discretion, desiring earnestly to bring things up as tight and snug as may be before my year is out. Can you make any suggestions in this connection?
And who are the best people to talk with likely to be competent and willing to help, with good ideas or otherwise?
In the early part of March,
President Lincoln issued a proclamation in regard to deserters from the army; promising the forgiveness of their crime, if they would return to their duty within a specified period named in the proclamation.
On the 23d of March,
Governor Andrew wrote to the
President upon this subject, recommending to him to apply the principle of amnesty to all enlisted men who had been tried by courts-martial for desertion, and who were serving their terms of imprisonment for their offences.
The Governor urges the adoption of this policy at considerable length and with great power, in the course of which he calls the attention of the
President to the case of an enlisted man belonging to the Third Regiment Massachusetts Heavy Artillery who had been tried by court-martial for being absent without leave, and whose sentence was ‘to be dishonorably discharged from the service, to be confined at hard labor in the
Clinton, N. Y., State prison for six years; the first twenty days of each and every month to wear a 24-pound ball attached to his leg by a chain three feet in length, and to forfeit all allowances.’
Colonel Gardiner Tufts, our State agent at
Washington, who knew the man and had examined the case, had written to the
Governor that he was a good and faithful soldier, ‘one who has been and can be trusted to go into the city without guard.’
The Governor had previously called the attention of the
Secretary of War to this sentence in strong and indignant language.
Major Burt,
