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in favor of a Catholic and Episcopal practice of fasting on Friday. Personally, I think Good Friday the proper day to select, it being of no consequence to the general public that it should be Thursday instead of Friday.
I am in favor of the latter, and believe, by adopting a day sacred by religious associations in the eyes of certain denominations, it will be better observed; while it is of some consequence to have the most solemn day of the “Christian year” thus recognized to those with whom its observation is a matter of conscience.
It is proper to remark, that this letter is very imperfectly copied in the letter-press book; but we have endeavored to fill up the omissions so as to keep unbroken the thread of the statement.
The letter had reference to the appointment of the annual fast day. Good Friday was not set apart, as desired by the
Governor; but the fast was held as usual on Thursday.
Governor Andrew was a Unitarian.
On the 10th of March,
General Order No. 5 was issued in accordance with a requisition of the War Department to raise one regiment of infantry for one year's service, and for thirty companies of infantry to recruit old regiments.
The new regiment was designated the Sixty-second, of which
Colonel Ansel D. Wass, formerly of the Nineteenth, and still later of the Sixtieth, Regiment, was commissioned colonel; and
Lieutenant-Colonel I. Harris Hooper, late of the Fifteenth Regiment, was commissioned lieutenant-colonel.
This regiment, and the unattached companies, were never organized, in consequence of the suppression of the
Rebellion, which happened a few weeks after the order was issued.
On the 13th of March, the
Governor wrote to
John M. Forbes in relation to the question of currency and a loan to the
State, a bill in regard to which was then before the
Committee on Finance of the Legislature.
He said,—
I proposed last year the issue from our Treasury of five per cent gold-bearing scrip, and strained the law to make short six per cent currency scrip instead, because no one will ever pay any large premium for gold-bearing scrip, even when gold was nearly three to one, and I wanted to save to the Commonwealth the enormous premium gold would have cost us. Six per cent in currency is about half what our interest account would have been.
Moreover, I thought
