y duly authorized officers.

VII. Any injury or wrong done to the family of any soldier,
on account of his being engaged in military service, will be
summarily punished.

VIII. As far as practicable, the labor of persons not
adapted to military service will be provided in substitution
for that of enlisted men.

IX. All regulations hitherto established for the government
of negroes, not inconsistent herewith, will be enforced by
the Provost Marshals of the different parishes, under the
direction of the Provost Marshal General.

BY COMMAND OF MAJOR GENERAL BANKS:

RICHARD B. IRWIN,
_Assistant Adjutant General._

In the department the actual number of negroes enlisted was never known,
from the fact that a practice prevailed of putting a live negro in a
dead one's place. For instance, if a company on picket or scouting lost
ten men, the officer would immediately put ten new men in their places
and have them answer to the dead men's names. I learn from very reliable
sources that this was done in Virginia, also in Missouri and Tennessee.
If the exact number of men could be ascertained, instead of 180,000 it
would doubtless be in the neighborhood of 220,000 who entered the ranks
of the army. An order was issued which aimed to correct the habit and to
prevent the drawing, by collusion, of the dead men's pay.

The date of the first organization of colored troops is a question of
dispute, but it seems as if the question might be settled, either by the
records of the War Department or the personal knowledge of those
interested. Of course the muster of a regiment or company is the record
of the War Department, but the muster by no means dates the organization
of the troops.[16] For example, a colonel may have been commissioned
July, 1862, and yet the muster of his regiment may be September 1862,
and even later, by two months, as is the case in more than one instance.
It is just as fair to take the date of a soldier's enlistment as the
date of the organization of a regiment, as that of the date of the order
detailing an officer to recruit as the date of the colonel's commission.
The writer's discharge from the Second Reg't. Louisiana Native Guards
credits him as enlisting on the 1st day of September, 1862; at this date
the 1st Reg't. La. N. G. was in the field, in November the Second
Regiment