re
of military clothing and camp equipage must be discontinued, and the
persons connected with this branch of the public service thus be
deprived suddenly of the employment essential to their subsistence;
nor is it merely the waste consequent on the forced abandonment of the
seaboard fortifications and of the interior military posts and other
establishments, and the enormous expense of recruiting and reorganizing
the Army and again distributing it over the vast regions which it now
occupies. These are evils which may, it is true, be repaired hereafter
by taxes imposed on the country; but other evils are involved, which no
expenditures, however lavish, could remedy, in comparison with which
local and personal injuries or interests sink into insignificance.

A great part of the Army is situated on the remote frontier or in the
deserts and mountains of the interior. To discharge large bodies of men
in such places without the means of regaining their homes, and where
few, if any, could obtain subsistence by honest industry, would be to
subject them to suffering and temptation, with disregard of justice and
right most derogatory to the Government.

In the Territories of Washington and Oregon numerous bands of Indians
are in arms and are waging a war of extermination against the white
inhabitants; and although our troops are actively carrying on the
campaign, we have no intelligence as yet of a successful result. On the
Western plains, notwithstanding the imposing display of military force
recently made there and the chastisement inflicted on the rebellious
tribes, others, far from being dismayed, have manifested hostile
intentions and been guilty of outrages which, if not designed to provoke
a conflict, serve to show that the apprehension of it is insufficient
wholly to restrain their vicious propensities. A strong force in the
State of Texas has produced a temporary suspension of hostilities there,
but in New Mexico incessant activity on the part of the troops is
required to keep in check the marauding tribes which infest that
Territory. The hostile Indians have not been removed from the State of
Florida, and the withdrawal of the troops therefrom, leaving that object
unaccomplished, would be most injurious to the inhabitants and a breach
of the positive engagement of the General Government.

To refuse supplies to the Army, therefore, is to compel the complete
cessation of all its operations and its practical disbandment,