The name of the person whom each recruit thus represents will be noted on the enlistment and descriptive rolls of the recruits and will be carried forward from those papers to the other official records which form his military history.

Certificates of this personal representation in the service will be forwarded from this office and issued by provost-marshals.*

JAMES B. FRY,

Provost-Marshal-General.

The "certificate" was prepared on parchment paper, bearing the arms of the United States engraved. The circular order above given was printed on the face of the certificate, which also bore the following:

To all who shall see these presents, greeting:

Whereas,

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, of

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, in the State of

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, a citizen of the United States, not being required by law to perform any military service, has voluntarily and at his own expense furnished

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, of

-----

, in the State of

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, as a representative recruit to serve in his stead in the military forces of the Union, he is, in accordance with the foregoing order, entitled to this official acknowledgment of his disinterested patriotism and public spirit.

JAMES B. FRY,

Brigadier-General and Provost-Marshal-General.

By the Provost-Marshal-General:

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,

Captain and Provost-Marshal,

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District of

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.

This appeal, though carefully distributed throughout the United States and very generally commended, was not attended with material success. Only 1,292 representative recruits were put in service.+ The lamented late President, Abraham Lincoln, was one of the first to answer this appeal and put a personal representative into the ranks. The names of all persons (including several ladies) by whom representative recruits were furnished are given in the Appendix, Document 39.

The re-enlistment and reorganization in 1863 and 1864 of regiments then in service (termed, after reorganization, "veteran volunteers").

The loss by expiration of enlistment of entire regiments and companies, after they had seen service enough to become valuable soldiers, proved a serious drawback to military operations during the first two years of the war. Soon after the organization of this Bureau its attention was directed to the discovery and application of a remedy for this evil. An examination in the summer of 1863 showed that, of the 956 volunteer regiments, 7 independent battalions, 61 independent companies, and 158 volunteer batteries, then in service, the terms of 455 regiments, 3 battalions, 38 independent companies, and 81 batteries would expire prior to December 31, 1864, leaving the Army to consist at that date of 501 regiments, 4 independent battalions, 23 independent companies, and 77 batteries, and such new men in addition as could be raised in the meantime.

The importance of retaining in the field as many as possible of these experienced organizations was evident.

To effect this a scheme was prepared and submitted by me for the re-enlistment of three-years" men still in service having less than one year longer to serve, and of men enlisted for nine months or less who had less than three months to serve.

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*Some verbal differences exist between this copy and the circular as printed in Vol. IV, this series, p. 453, which see.

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+Subsequently increased to 1,296. See foot-none (*), p. 932.