As soon, however, as circumstances would permit, and as
far as it has been practicable consistently with the public interests,
the reduction of the Army has been accomplished; but the appropriations
for its pay and for other branches of the military service having proved
inadequate, the earliest attention to that subject will be necessary;
and the expediency of continuing upon the peace establishment the staff
officers who have hitherto been provisionally retained is also
recommended to the consideration of Congress.
In the performance of the Executive duty upon this occasion there has
not been wanting a just sensibility to the merits of the American Army
during the late war; but the obvious policy and design in fixing an
efficient military peace establishment did not afford an opportunity to
distinguish the aged and infirm on account of their past services nor
the wounded and disabled on account of their present sufferings. The
extent of the reduction, indeed, unavoidably involved the exclusion
of many meritorious officers of every rank from the service of their
country; and so equal as well as so numerous were the claims to
attention that a decision by the standard of comparative merit could
seldom be attained. Judged, however, in candor by a general standard of
positive merit, the Army Register will, it is believed, do honor to the
establishment, while the case of those officers whose names are not
included in it devolves with the strongest interest upon the legislative
authority for such provision as shall be deemed the best calculated to
give support and solace to the veteran and the invalid, to display the
beneficence as well as the justice of the Government, and to inspire a
martial zeal for the public service upon every future emergency.
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