Plan of Enrollment and conscription.
Upon the activity shown in carrying out the recent conscription act and returning absentees and deserters from the army to their duty depends the greater portion of our success in the spring campaign now approaching. The following plan has been proposed by a distinguished general officer in Gen. Lee's army:
- I. Continue the Bureau of Conscription and Enrollment as an office of record upon this matter; to note all increments to the army, whether by voluntary act or by conscription — all discharges and exemptions, &c.
- II. Let this Bureau employ upon enrolling duty persons of the reserved class and soldiers disabled for field duty — but no one of the active class.
- III. Let the commanding General of an army cause details of officers to be made from each regiment upon the nomination of regimental commanders — say one officer from each company for such periods and at such times as the commanding General may prescribe, to go to the particular locality where his company was organized and raised, and there to collect conscripts and delinquents — each officer to be supplied with a guard if necessary.
- IV. Allow regiments whose own immediate country may be in the hands of the enemy, to recruit their companies from adjoining counties — but in the exercise of this privilege, whenever practicable, to be restricted to the State in which their commands were originally raised.
- V. Cases of physicial disability thus arising, to be acted upon by Medical Boards to be organized for each county — the recruiting officers having the privilege of appeal in all cases, where he may consider the party fit for military service, and in all such cases the party to be conscribed and taken to the army, where it shall be the duty of the medical officer of the regiment to revise and finally dispose of the case.
