To Ulysses S. Grant1Jump to section
I am told . . . that the two first paragraphs of the within order work badly in the Army. Will Lieut. General Grant please give me his opinion on this [re]quest.
Annotation
[1] Metropolitan Art Association Catalog, March 9, 1914, No. 650. According to the catalog description, Lincoln's endorsement is written on the back of AGO Circular No. 61, September 2, 1864. No reply from Grant is mentioned, and no date is given for Lincoln's endorsement. The date supplied above is derived from a letter written to Lincoln by Chaplain Benjamin S. Fry, Sixty-third Ohio Volunteers, Lookout Mountain, Officers Hospital, September 7, 1864: ``Before I was sent to the rear on account of disability, I hear many officers complaining bitterly of late orders of the War Department, for which however generally you were cursed. I refer to those orders which compel officers to serve three years from their last muster; which in some instances will require five years service. . . . Men are anticipating a forced stay in the army beyond the period for which they enlisted or were mustered. . . . There is the deepest feeling on this subject and a growing ill-will against the Administration. . . . Many of the men are deeply in earnest and they are exerting an influence against your re-election that will command many votes.'' (DLC-RTL). The first two paragraphs in Circular No. 61 stated that officers who received new commissions would be held for three years from the date of their new commission. AGO Circular No. 75, September 22, 1864, revoked Circular No. 61 and substituted new regulations as follows:
``1. Hereafter when a commissioned officer of a three-years' volunteer organization receives a new commission . . . he may at his option be mustered into the U.S. service for three years or the unexpired term of the organization of which he may at the time be a member; provided that no officer . . . so receiving a commission shall be mustered in for a less period than three years if at the date he presents himself for muster under it he has less than six months to serve.
``2. All regimental officers of volunteers now in the service of the United States who have been in the said service three years, and all who shall hereafter have served three years, may, if they so desire, be mustered out and honorably discharged the service on satisfactory proof being furnished . . . that they have so served. . . .'' (OR, III, IV, 740).