natural at the opening of a War, and a deep interest resulting from the supposed peril of Taylor's army. Yet the government chose to accept gratuitously the risk, which in due time became a certainty, of embarrassing itself, disappointing the country and encouraging the enemy by offering a brief term of service.[1]
Instead of retaining control of the organization and officering of the regiments, it entrusted this work to the states, and as a rule the men chose their own officers;[2] but in these features of the system, as in our governmental methods generally, there was some advantage as well as much loss. Webster, for example, held that volunteers ought to have the right of electing for leaders men whom they knew and could trust; and if they preferred to sicken and bleed under captains as ignorant as themselves, whom they knew and could trust, rather than fare otherwise under trained officers whom they would have had to obey without fully understanding them, they were perhaps entitled to the privilege, and no doubt they learned something from exercising it. Anyhow, said Webster, the other method would have been degrading; and American citizens must not be degraded. As for generals, the law of June 18 compelled the Executive to take them from the militia, although they would be under no obligation to serve more than three months, and might withdraw in the midst of a campaign. There was no provision for filling vacancies resulting from death or discharge; and finally the appropriations were so poorly arranged that the quartermaster's office had to juggle with funds as even Polk himself could not lawfully have done.[3]
Such as it was, however, the system went promptly into effect. Beginning on May 15, the secretary of war sent requisitions for volunteers to the governors of the states, deeming this method of application advantageous as well as due to their official position, since they were supposed to know the troops of their jurisdictions and the best places from which to draw them. In general the plan was to summon about 25,000 from the northeastern states, to be enrolled and await orders, and to call out nearly as many from the other states for immediate service. The former were all to be infantry; the latter, horse and foot in the ratio of about one to three. It was expected that existing militia organizations — regiments or parts of regiments — would offer their services, and that new
