e than the
continuance of the war ought they to be engaged; as facts
incontestably prove that the difficulty and cost of enlistments
increase with time. When the army was first raised at Cambridge, I am
persuaded the men might have been got, without a bounty, for the war:
after that, they began to see that the contest was not likely to end
so speedily as was imagined, and to feel their consequence, by
remarking, that to get their militia, in the course of the last year,
many towns were induced to give them a bounty. Foreseeing the evils
resulting from this, and the destructive consequences which would
unavoidably follow short enlistments, I took the liberty, in a long
letter, (date not now recollected, as my letter book is not here,) to
recommend the enlistments for and during the war, assigning such
reasons for it, as experience has since convinced me, were well
founded. At that time, twenty dollars would, I am persuaded, have
engaged the men for this term: but it will not do to look back--and if
the present opportunity is slipped, I am persuaded that twelve months
more will increase our difficulties four fold. I shall therefore take
the liberty of giving it as my opinion, that a good bounty be
immediately offered, aided by the proffer of at least a hundred, or a
hundred and fifty acres of land, and a suit of clothes, and a blanket,
to each non-commissioned officer and soldier, as I have good authority
for saying, that however high the men's pay may appear, it is barely
sufficient, in the present scarcity and dearness of all kinds of
goods, to keep them in clothes, much less to afford support to their
families. If this encouragement, then, is given to the men, and such
pay allowed to the officers, as will induce gentlemen of liberal
character and liberal sentiments to engage; and proper care and
caution be used in the nomination, (having more regard to the
characters of persons than the number of men they can enlist,) we
should, in a little time, have an army able to cope with any that can
be opposed to it, as there are excellent materials to form one out of:
but whilst the only merit an officer possesses is his ability to raise
men; whilst those men consider and treat him as an equal, and in the
character of an officer, regard him no more than a broomstick, being
mixed together as one common herd; no order nor discipline can
prevail, nor will the officer ever meet with that respect which is
essentially necessary to du