July 31, 1862.
Our recruiting goes on very well, except in Boston where it
has been badly botched, and drags terribly. I suppose we none of us knew last
year how much the recruiting was stimulated by the zeal of officers to fill
their companies and earn their commissions. Now we make few or no new officers,
filling the vacancies from the ranks, and exhorting people to go into the old
regiments. It is therefore nobody's business in particular to go round hunting
up the men. In the country where everybody attends to what is nobody's business
this makes no difference and every day the selectmen of any number of towns appear
with their full quotas of men taking them to the camps. But public meetings and
all that sort of thing do not do this work for us in Boston. They say today
that the Maine quota is full. I dare say, that with the absurd bounty we are
paying for men which has done more to check recruiting than to help it, we
shall draw men from Maine to fill up our gaps. People are getting into better
spirit and the tone of the public is absolutely firm, ‘They have just found out
that this is not a picnic,’ as I heard some one say in the cars today.
SOURCE: Edward Everett Hale Jr., The Life and Letters of
Edward Everett Hale, Volume 1, p. 329-30
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