ant on finding their regiments and reaching them; and their dread of the convalescent and the stragglers' camps at Alexandria; many men not unwilling to do their duties, have been detained from their regiments, and not accounted for until at last they became marked on the rolls as absentees without leave. Certain conspicuous instances of such mistakes have occurred within my personal knowledge. Convalescent soldiers are detained as nurses in hospitals; others are sent on detached duty of every sort, detailed to assist quartermasters and commissaries; rolls, returns, books of whole regiments are utterly lost on retreats or hasty marches; and many missing men are, in consequence unjustly reported, for the time, as deserters. On lists of more than twelve hundred soldiers reported to these headquarters as absent without leave, only some twenty had manifestly deserted, in the criminal sense, so as to justify their being publicly announced by name. Indeed, it was the somewhat rhetorical testimony of one of the most devoted of our regimental commanders that the bravest and most daring exhibitions he had witnessed during the war were the efforts of his men to escape to the front.

I, of course, do not include in these remarks those persons attracted by recent bounties, of whom there

have been too many striving to enlist without the

purpose of serving.

Acknowledgment is due to the municipal magistrates, of their cordial co-operation with the Provost Marshal in his efforts to restore absentees to their regiments, undiscouraged by the difficulties in the Federal system of reimbursing the expenses of such service.

Regimental Rolls, and The Soldiers' Families' Relief Law.

The perfectness of our regimental rolls, (necessarily and constantly changing,) and the facility of access to the information they should supply, are in the immediate present, and will be for many years to come, objects of grave practical importance. The relief afforded by the towns to the families of volunteers, the reimbursement of the towns therefor, the adjustment of questions concerning national bounties, bounty lands and pensions, are among the more apparent reasons for solicitude in rendering these records full, authentic, and easy to be consulted and understood. Nor is it any more than just to our volunteers, their families and posterity, to say nothing of the claims of history upon the fidelity with which we record the great transactions of our time, that the name and fate

of every actor in the War should be preserved in permanence and without error. I have therefore caused measures to be recently taken in the office of the Adjutant-General for the thorough revision of all the regimental rolls and for the preparation of an additional roll, with an alphabetical arrangement, containing in eleven columns, a consolidated outline of the particulars needing to be known and of possible attainment.

I respectfully call your attention to the condition of families dependent on volunteers who have fallen in the service by wounds resulting fatally or in permanent disability. The death or discharge of such, in many cases, puts their families in danger of pauperism, which the temporary continuance of the State relief might permanently avert. I am aware, aware, there is a sense in which it seems true that you can scarcely do one more harm than to help him; and yet the duty of society imposes the utmost solicitude to assist those to help themselves who have lost their natural stay and staff in serving the common cause.

But no public benefaction can supply the deepest want of all. The gentle and sympathizing offices of neighborly kindness and personal good will, alone can cheer the sorrowing heart of widowhood, encour

age the sinking hopes and smooth the rugged way of

orphanage.

The Act for the relief of the families of volunteers includes among its beneficiaries the brothers and sisters, standing in need of aid, dependent on the volunteer at the time of his enlistment. But by an omission, apparently inadvertent, it does not include them in the class of dependent relatives, the expense of whose relief shall be reimbursed to the towns by the Commonwealth. I recommend an amendment supplying this omission.

The Ordnance Bureau.

I have already alluded to the change in the method of equipping our troops which has occurred within the

year, the State having provided their original supplies in 1861, the United States in 1862. This was the case also with their armament. During the past year, the State received from England nearly six thousand Enfield rifled arms, being the remainder of the purchases made there by its agent in 1861. All of these, together with such other effective arms as it already held, were issued to its troops, but for the remaining arms necessary, it was obliged to draw upon the Federal Ordnance Bureau, from which there were received during the year, 8,100 Springfield,

2,700 Enfield, and 3,600 Austrian muskets, all rifled. Of the thirteen volunteer three years' infantry regiments, which marched from the State in 1862, one, (the Twenty-eighth,) received its arms in 1861, and two, (the Thirtieth and Thirty-first,) were furnished independently of the State Government. The remaining ten were armed, five with Springfield and five with Enfield rifled muskets. Of the seventeen regiments of nine months' infantry, four received Springfield rifles, five Enfield rifles, two Windsor rifles, four Austrian rifles, and two Springfield smooth-bored muskets. So far as the State Government was able to discriminate, it issued the superior arms to the regiments having the longest term of service; but owing to the receipt of the arms from the United States by instalments proportioned to the progress of the recruitment, its discretion in this respect was inconsiderable.

The State Arsenal is now almost empty of arms belonging to the Commonwealth. Less than a hundred rifles remain there, and hardly enough smooth-bored muskets to arm a single regiment. Of the fragments of our Volunteer Militia, the Cadets of the First and Second Divisions, four companies of cavalry, one section of artillery and a single company of infantry alone remain; and these are not all armed.