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MILITARY AND NAVY ROLLS.

The following is an outline of the locations of all the military and navy rolls now in existence in the different executive offices at Washington, necessary to be consulted to ascertain the best evidence of service, in deciding on claims for bounty lands, in the absence of regular discharges. Of the early portions of those rolls in each branch of the service, great deficiencies exist in consequence of their destruction by the conflagration of the War Department in 1814, and of the Treasury Department in 1833.* 1. Rolls in the Adjutant General's Office.

1. Rolls of all commissioned officers in the regular army-except those that were consumed in the conflagration of the War Department, in 1814.

2. Rolls of all enlisted men in the regular army since the peace of 17th February, 1815.

3. Rolls of volunteers and militia for the Mexican war, from 24th April, 1846, to July 4th, 1848, (and partially in the Pension Office.)†

4. Rolls of all enlisted men of the ten additional regiments of the army, (embracing 3d dragoons, and 9th to 16th infantry:) (and partially in the Pension Office.)

2. Rolls in the Second Auditor's Office.

1. Rolls of volunteers and militia engaged in the Seminole War, from the 20th November, 1817, to the 31st October, 1818.

2. Rolls of volunteers and militia engaged in the Black Hawk war, from the 26th April, 1832, to the 30th September, 1832.

3. Rolls of volunteers and militia engaged in the Florida war, from the 28th December, 1835, to the 14th August, 1842.

4. Rolls of volunteers and militia engaged in the Creek war, from the 5th May, 1836, to the 30th September, 1837.

5. Duplicates of all military rolls in the Adjutant General's Office are partially here, but should be complete in this (the 2d Auditor's) office except those that were consumed in the conflagration of the War Department in 1814.

3. Rolls in the Third Auditor's Office.

1. Rolls of all enlisted men in the regular army prior to the peace of the 17th February, 1815 except those consumed in the conflagration of the Treasury in 1833. 2. Rolls of all volunteers and militia, prior to, and during the war of 1812, that is, to the peace of the 17th February, 1815-except those that were consumed in the conflagration of the Treasury in 1833.

3. Rolls and inspection returns (to a very limited amount) of volunteers and militia called out in the war of 1813, for the States of Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, North Carolina, and South Carolina, transferred to this (the 3d Auditor's) office, by the Adjutant General.

4. Rolls in the Pension Office.

1. Rolls of volunteers and militia engaged in the Mexican war, from the 24th April 1846, to the 4th July, 1848, are partially in the Pension Office.

Where it occurs that there is no discharge given, or, that at some period after the service had ceased, a certificate in lieu of a discharge is given, the estimate of the duration of service must be established by the rolls; but where the rolls are destroyed, or do not give the facts, then the duration of service must be ascertained by evidence of living witnesses, &c., or some other credible evidence. See Decisions 9th and 13th September, 1850, page 580, No. 101 and 102, also Circular 20th March, 1851, item 8, page 673, No. 6-the liberal spirit of which is, to admit the best credible testimony that can be offered, in the absence of rolls of which a great portion has been destroyed by fire, and of discharges which have been lost, destroyed, or never received.

It not unfrequently occurs, that when the rolls in one office do not establish the service claimed, the said service may be established by the rolls in another office, according to the above references.

2. Rolls of all enlisted men of the ten additional regiments of the army, (say 3d dragoons, and the 9th to the 16th infantry,) raised by act 15th February, 1847, are partially in this office.

5. Rolls of the Naval Service in the Fourth Auditor's Office.

1. Rolls of seamen and flotilla men in all wars.

2. Rolls of marines in the land and naval service, in all wars.

There are also in the Pension Office various revolutionary rolls of several of the States, but in a very imperfect condition, and in some cases unavailable for reference, for the reason that they have not been properly indexed. Of these, the Virginia rolls, may be the most perfect.*

MATTERS UNAVOIDABLY DEFERRED.

On account of the great expense already incurred beyond the remuneration usually estimated for so small an edition of a book of this size, (already extending to 800 pages,) we are compelled to withhold from the press a very considerable portion of the matter we had contemplated to insert in this Introduction. Besides the omission of the analytical tables illustrating the various denominations of pensions and bounty lands, which have, in some respects, been much confounded, both in legislation and in the administration of the laws, we have been unable to devote the still more enlarged space that would have been required for the commentaries which were also prepared for the introduction and referred to by notes interspersed throughout the work.

A further, and perhaps a yet more potent reason, has been suggested for deferring these commentaries: it is doubted whether editorial strictures (as they might be considered) on the inequalities of legislative provisions, and the conflicting of opinions, decisions, and regulations, in the administration of the laws, would be acceptable, however they might tend to simplify and shorten the modes of correcting them hereafter.

These unavoidable omissions we exceedingly regret,† although they constitute, in many respects, a gratuitous labor, bestowed on greatly mystified subjects, which could hardly have been expected of us after so much elaboration that has been otherwise bestowed on the work as now presented. We shall, nevertheless, very gladly insert them hereafter, should a second and larger edition be called for; and in that event we will cheerfully transmit them through the proper channels, as a supplement, without charge, to all persons holding a copy of this edition. And a speedy call for a second edition we

As an effort to remedy embarrassments mentioned in the following letter to the Adjutant General, it was prepared and suggested to the Commissioner, by the senior Editor, at the time of its date; and, from the answer to it, dated June 2, 1851, with some other information derived from the Navy Department, he prepared, at the request of the Commissioner, the tabular statements in the office, of which the above is an abstract.

PENSION OFFICE, May 26, 1851.

SIR: The military rolls to which recourse must be had to verify the service of claimants for bounty land and pensions, being very limited in this office, and there being no complete reference to them in the office to assure me, in all cases, where to send for verification of service alleged in the declarations, I would respectfully request you to favor me with such a statement of them as the records of your office and other available means of information will enable you to make.

I send you a list which has been made out, and is now acted on, in this office, after encountering a great deal of embarrassment in giving documents their proper direc tion, and which is not yet entirely removed. The statement desired will serve for official reference in all time to come, and therefore is more necessary than merely to meet the present emergency.

(Signed.)

With high respect, your obedient servant,
J. E. HEATH, Commissioner.

Adjutant General ROGER JONES.

†They are supplied at the end of this introduction.

cannot but sanguinely anticipate, from the high estimate in which it is held by the Commissioner of Pensions and others to whose inspection we have submitted it, independent of the universal interest in a subject that naturally dedicates itself to the military spirit of the country, which, impersonated by the patriotic ardor of Washington, at once gave us a national existence and an impulsion in that career which has already wafted us to the shores of the Pacific, and, with two inconsiderable exceptions, made us an ocean-bound republic, at the same time making us the centre of the civilized world, and the putative guardians of the remnants of barbarism on this continent, destined, through our fostering hands, to be reclaimed to civilization. Such have been the imme diate sources from which the munificent bounties in lands and pensions have flown, and will never cease to reward the patriotic "regular" and "citizen soldier," his widow or his orphan, whilst the profession of arms shall be needed in the vindication of our country's rights, or in the redress of her wrongs.

VIRGINIA HALF-PAY AND COMMUTATION CLAIMS.

For reasons partly alluded to under the foregoing head, but more particularly because we considered the merit of these claims to be finally adjudged upon principles of law and equity by the Department, under the two advisory opinions of the Attorney General of the United States of the 27th of March, 1849, at page 663, in the cases of the administrator of Churchill Gibbs, and the representatives of John M. Galt; and presuming, moreover, that, under all aspects of the subject, the act of the 5th of July, 1832, being purely a special act for the relief of a particular class of claimants, the principles governing the administration or execution of the same were now settled as a finality, and did not call for a rehearsal of the other side of a question raised by previous misconceptions of a special act ratifying and re-affirming rights already conceded and repeatedly recognised in particular cases, we had omitted the insertion of the following opinions, appertaining to Virginia half-pay and commutation claims.* But on further reflection, and under the suggestion of the Commissioner of Pensions, made to us on finding the argument of Attorney General Clifford omitted, we abandoned the responsibility of that and other omissions of the same purport, which we had considered as no longer applicable to or impeding the admission of the like claims, and therefore give them a place here, where they will be as readily accessible to all parties interested as if they were interspersed in the body of opinions in the order of their dates.

At the same time we take the liberty of presenting a summary of all the legal points touching these claims, several of which were not adverted to by the late Attorney General, in the cases of Gibbs and Galt; but all of which confirm his views in those cases, and are now applicable to all like cases. To this summary, we may premise that half pay for life was the substantive thing promised for military service during the revolutionary war, which would infuse its quality of equity and right of grant into any mode of satisfying the same, that might afterwards be substituted with the consent of the claimant; consequently, half pay necessarily carried with it the right of commutation for whatever period and for whatever amount Congress might estimate and determine such half pay for life to be worth.

The resolution of the 21st October, 1780, which says, "the officers who shall continue in the service to the end of the war, shall also be entitled to half pay during life, to commence from the time of their reduction," makes no discrimination between those rendering such service in any State line and those in the avowed Continental establishment of the regular army of the United States, (see page 7, No. 7:) and the act of the 4th

This finality does not seem to us to be disturbed by the recent opinion of the Hon. Attorney General Cushing, (see supplement, No. 5,) in which the principal question discussed and decided is, that a resolution of either House of Congress, though entitled to respectful consideration, is not mandatory on a head of executive department.

August, 1790, "providing for the debt of the United States," makes them identical: (See an abstract of this law, page xxxvii of this Introduction.) The 3d section of that act authorizes a loan to be proposed for the full amount of the "domestic debt," by opening books to receive subscriptions in the several States, &c. And the 13th section provides that the sums which shall be subscribed, shall be payable in the principal and interest of "CERTIFICATES" or "NOTES," which were issued by the several States before the 1st January, 1790, as acknowledgments of debts by THEM owing, &c.—with the proviso that the "CERTIFICATES" of said States, so receivable, must have been issued for no other considerations than compensations, and expenditures for service or supplies towards the prosecution of the war, or the defences of some part of the United States during said war; and that in lieu of such State "CERTIFICATES" or "NOTES," loan office "CERTIFICATES" shall be issued to such subscribers, bearing interest at 6 per cent., or 3 per cent., as the case might be.

Thus it is manifest that these creditors of the respective States, were considered and assumed, by this act, as creditors of the United States. And to this purport the said act further provides "that, as it may happen that some of the creditors of the United States may not think proper to become subscribers to the said loan, nothing in this act contained shall be construed to alter, abridge, or impair their rights, or the contracts upon which the respective claims are founded."

Now, as completely as the provisions of this act, taken either in connection with the resolution of October, 1780, or isolatedly, and in view alone of its own universal bearing on all claims for services in all the State lines, and for expenditures by individuals or States, in prosecution of the war, yet it was considered by some (doubtless without adverting fully to those provisions) that Virginia, or the officers of her State line, had no claim on the United States for half pay for life, until the passage of the act of July 5, 1832; and this appears to have been the general sentiment, judging from the forbearance of claimants to present such claims until the passage of that act-which we, with all deference, would consider nothing more than the legislative ratification of a pre-existing right under the funding act of 1790, in regard to the state lines and navy of all the States; and it has been further contended that claims for commutation of half pay were not embraced by said act of July; whereas commutation is nothing more than the more eligible mode recognized by Congress, of discharging the substantive obligation of half pay for life, and not an extension of the assumed obligation of the United States. Hence, notwithstanding the intimation set forth at the conclusion of one of the committee reports of the House of Representatives, to that effect, (see report of Committee on Revolutionary Claims, 18th May, 1838,) claimants seem to have entertained different views in regard to the provisions of that act, sustained, also, perhaps, by a retrospect of the act of August, 1790, if we judge from the frequent applications of claimants, shortly after the passage of the act of July, claiming commutation five years' full pay in lieu of half pay for life, not only of the continental line and army proper of the United States, but of different State lines, accordingly recognized and relieved by special acts of Congress, of which a great number of instances will be found in this compilation, which may be regarded as legislative constructions of that act. In evidence of this mode of recognizing the identity of commutation, (five years' full pay,) with half pay for life, we beg leave to refer to the act of the 2d March, 1833, page 186, No. 157, "for the relief of John Thomas and Peter Foster," which, in the 1st section, requires the accounting officers of the Treasury to settle the account of John Thomas, and allow him "five years' full pay," as a captain of infantry of the Revolution, in the Virginia line, with such interest thereon as would have been paid to him for the amount of said "commutation," if the same had by him been subscribed to the funded debt of the United States, under the act of 1790. And the 2d section of the act makes the same provision for Peter Foster, a lieutenant of infantry of the revolutionary army, of the Virginia line

and allows him five years' full pay, as such lieutenant, with such interest thereon as is directed in the 1st section, &c.

Notwithstanding these decisive evidences of the original and unchanged views of Congress in relation to the claims of States and individuals in State lines, some of these claims encountered difficulties in the Department, and were rejected, and then taken before Congress, as in the case of the legal representative of Churchill Gibbs, as long ago as the 30th December, 1837, and anterior thereto, in the case of the representatives of William Vawter. Congress uniformly sustained these claims; and, in that of Churchill Gibbs, after repeated action of committees of the House and the Senate, having referred the claim back to the Department where it had been rejected, stating in their reports that no further legislation was necessary on the subject—and, having given a further interpretation of the previous legislation, by the 4th section of the act of the 3d March, 1835, (page 196, No. 171,) to continue the office of Commissioner of Pensions, which says, "the duties heretofore required of and performed by the Secretary of the Treasury, under the provisions of the act of the 15th May, 1828, granting allowances to officers and soldiers of the revolutionary army, and in relation to Virginia claims for revolutionary services and the deficiency of COMMUTATION, be, and the same are hereby transferred to, and under the duties of the Secretary of War," &c., re-affirmed those views. Yet the Department continued to act in pursuance of the views taken by the Secretary of the Treasury and opinions of Attorneys General, anterior to this transfer and disposition of those "duties," showing how strong and imposing an air of veresimilitude can be imposed upon subjects of the most learned disquisition, but under erroneous inferences, for want of a few qualifying and controlling data essential to give them their true aspect-until the two opinions of the Attorney General, of the 27th March, 1849, Appendix I, in which he refers to several of the aforementioned interpretations of Congress, and reverses the previous decisions against these claims. The last action of the Committee of the House on Revolutionary Claims, in the case of Gibbs, was a report of the 28th February, 1849, which concluded in these words: "Concurring in the several reports heretofore made in this case, two of which have been sanctioned by the vote of the Senate and the House of Representatives, it would be useless labor to provide other and further legislation for payment of this petition. That the claim is just, is scarcely contested by the Attorney General, for he refers it to Congress for relief; and if it be just, as the committee think it is, then it can be settled, and ought to be settled and paid under the 3d section of the act of the 5th July, 1832," &c. To this review we surely need not add that it would have made a volume of itself to have included all similar disquisitions upon contested questions of right, become inapplicable to purposes of practical utility, after the true aspects of the matters contested have been attained by a final review of the whole ground, as in the whole class of cases of which those of the representatives of Gibbs, and of Galt, set forth in the opinions of Mr. Attorney General Johnson, of the 27th March, 1849. Yet we now insert the following, predicated on less comprehensive views of the subject:

Five years' full pay was offered by Congress as an equivalent or substitute for half pay for life and the acceptance of the substitute by an officer precluded the renewal of his claim for half pay, and conferred no claim to Virginia officers for COMMUTATION. The judgments against Virginia, in behalf of the officers of her State line, have been for commutation, and not for half pay-which judgments must have been rendered on the principle of compromise between her and her officers, she not having promised the commutation or substitute of half pay-which supposes that Congress did not assume it. Therefore those officers must abide by the judgments, and not fall back upon their original claim for half pay, as, in like manner, those who accepted the substitute offered by the United States, exonerated the United States from their obligation for half pay. So that, whatever may be the obligations of Virginia, Congress have only authorized the half pay, by the act of 5th July, 1832, where the officer had not elected to accept the substitute.

ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE, March 21, 1833. SIR: Many pressing engagements in the Supreme Court, during its late term, have prevented me from replying sooner to your letter of the 19th of January last, in rela

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