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allow the bounty to the recruits for the two companies of heavy artillery.
I wish to know whether the men will stick, and run the risk of getting the bounty hereafter, which I have no doubt will be eventually allowed; and, in my judgment, they are entitled to it by a law of Congress.
I know the Governor will do his best, and I presume General Butler will, to have the bounty paid.
The State bounty of $325 of course they will receive.
I hope they will stick.
The Governor has ordered the four persons selected by the company, to be commissioned; and the commissions will be made out as soon as he learns that the company will hang together.
The Governor requested the
Adjutant-General to write again to
Mr. Alley to thank him and
Mr. Dawes for their efforts to induce the
Secretary of War to change his decision.
The letter said,—
That we have been disappointed, and the men have been disappointed, at the adherence of Mr. Stanton to his original decision, I need not affirm.
We knew nothing about the arrangement which General Butler acceded to with the Secretary of War, in regard to the non-payment of bounties to these men, until we received the information from Colonel Fry, Provost-Marshal-General, some days after we received General Butler's despatch that “authority is given: go ahead.”
The Springfield company was enlisted before they knew of the decision which placed them outside of all other three years recruits, and which deprives them of the liberality which the Secretary of War and the laws of Congress gave to all recruits under the call of the President, of Oct. 17, 1863.
The city of Springfield has to furnish, as her quota of the present call, 476 men. It is a large number for so small a city, especially when we take into consideration the many men for the service which that patriotic city has already furnished.
The men composing this company are represented to be of the best stock in Hampden County.
They have enlisted for three years to fight, they care not where.
They cannot understand, nor can any of us, why they should be placed outside the pale of congressional law and the general orders of the War Department.
They enlisted to go forth to the front, with their lives in their hands, to yield them up, if it be so decreed, in any of the conflicts with the enemies of the Union.
These brave and gallant men still adhere to their original design; and I received a telegram from Springfield this morning, that they would report in a body at “Camp Meigs,” Readville, to-morrow.
As old Dominie Sampson said, “it is not the lucre they crave for.”
