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has been mustered in. I want to know whether they shall be sent to Fortress Monroe, as General Butler wants them to be, or what I shall do with them.
They are ready to start at twenty-four hours notice.’
May 29.—He telegraphs to Colonel Dalton, Washington, ‘Urge Government to let me have guns from ordnance yard, and mount them in harbor forts.
Merchants here constantly pressing me to obtain them.’
He writes to M. C. Pratt, Holyoke, ‘I have no orders for cavalry.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to furnish more infantry and cavalry, but cannot do it.’
He writes to Colonel Jonas H. French, Boston, declining to accept his offer to raise a regiment, ‘as there are troops now under arms in the State sufficient to fill double the quota assigned to Massachusetts.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to have liberty to send more troops.’
In the early weeks of the war, several debts were contracted in the name of the Commonwealth, by officers and others, for supplies for the immediate use of troops on their way to Washington.
The commissary and quartermaster's departments had yet to be organized, and a proper system of expenditure and personal accountability established.
Many of the bills which were forwarded from New York and other places to the State authorities for payment contained items which were not recognized in ‘the regulations,’ and the prices charged were extravagantly high.
The files of the Governor contain a number of letters relating to these matters.
One of these letters states that in ‘almost all the New-York bills for supplies bought at that time for the troops, the charges average very much more than Boston prices for similar articles.’
One of the committee of the Governor's Council, to whom these bills were referred for settlement, remarked that ‘the purchasers, whoever they were, seemed to have looked for persons who sold at retail prices, and to have succeeded admirably in finding what they were looking for.’
These bills were, however, paid; and the appointment of Colonel Frank E. Howe as the agent of the Commonwealth to look after the wants of our soldiers in New York put an end to these early attempts to peculate upon the
1868. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
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