I am still perplexed as to the mode in which I can best carry out the work intrusted to me. It is so difficult to adjust my mode of rapid working to the slow routine of the Department that I sometimes almost despair of the task and want to abandon it.No private business could succeed if carried on after the manner of the National Government at that time, and this was not the fault of Lincoln's administration at all, but of the whole course of Jackson democracy from 1829 to 1861. The clerks in the various departments did not hold their positions from the heads of those departments, but from outside politicians who had no connection with the Government business, and as a consequence they were saucy and insubordinate. They found it to their interest to delay and obstruct the procedure of business in order to give the impression that they were overworked, and in that way make their positions
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return trip to Philadelphia, and sent his son to investigate and report on the latter.
Not the trace of a colored regiment could be discovered at Fortress Monroe, but there were scores of Union officers lounging and smoking on the piazza of the Hygeia Hotel. Mr. Stearns thought that business economy had better begin by reducing the number of officers rather than the pay of the soldiers.
On July 28 Major Stearns wrote from Baltimore:
1905. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
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