531 Series III Volume V- Serial 126 - Union Letters, Orders, Reports
Page 531 | UNION AUTHORITIES. |
Several of the Southern arsenals have been reoccupied, and it is intended to reoccupy them all, except that at Fayetteville, N. C., which has been destroyed. The necessary measures have been taken for the preservation of the powder mill at Augusta, and the laboratory and unfinished armory at Macon, Ga., which have been captured.
The number of permanent U. S. arsenals and armories is twenty- eight. The command and supervision of these, together with the inspection services required at the arsenals, and foundries, the powder mills, and other private establishments engaged in work for the Government, furnish constant employment for the whole number of ordnance officers (sixty-four) now authorized by law. The proper discharge of these essential duties requires that number should be continued as part of the military peace establishment of the country.
The armies in the field have been amply and well supplied with arms and other ordnance stores, and the fortifications have had their armaments kept in order and strengthened and increased by additional guns of heavy caliber and great efficiency.
THE SIGNAL CORPS.
On the 1st of November, 1864, the Signal Corps numbered 168 officers and 1,350 enlisted men, distributed in detachments among the armies in the field and military departments. All that portion of the Signal Corps on duty east of the Mississippi River has been mustered out of service, the act of Congress under which the corps was organized having limited its organization to the duration of the rebellion. There now remain nine officers and thirty-seven enlisted men in the Military Division of the Mississippi and fifteen officers and ninety-nine enlisted men in the Military Division of the Gulf. These detachments are operating with the troops on the plains in Texas and along the southwestern boundary.
The expenditures from appropriations for the Signal service amounted to $8,537.06 during the year ending September 30, 1865. The balance unexpended amounts to $248,062.
MILITARY TELEGRAPH.
The telegraph has continued to be a most efficient and important instrument in military operations. Its officers have shown the same devotion and fidelity which have signalized their efforts during former years. There have been constructed during the year 3,246 miles of military telegraph; 8,323 miles have been in operation during the year, and at its termination 6,228 miles were still in use. The expenditure upon the military telegraph during the fiscal year was $1,360,000; since the beginning of the war, $2,655,500. There have been constructed and operated in all during the war about 15,000 mules of military telegraph. Control has been assumed of the telegraphs of the late rebellious districts as fast as they fell into our hands, and arrangements are now made by which the lines are kept in repair by the stockholders, the United States being at the expense only of purely military lines and stations.
MILITARY PRISONERS AND PRISONERS OF WAR.
The report of the commissioner of exchanges exhibits the exchange transaction during the war, with statistical tables and other information respecting the condition and treatment of prisoners on each side.*
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*See Hitchcock to Stanton, Series II, Vol. VIII, p. 799.
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Page 531 | UNION AUTHORITIES. |