The Adjutant General of North Carolina reports to me that there are quite a large number of delinquents and deserters in this State. I think that a number of causes contribute to bring about this situation.

1. Our people are not a military people. They are not accustomed to military discipline. To take orders from any one is foreign to their experience and shocks their sense of independence. When the whole Nation is suddenly placed upon a military basis it would be almost miraculous if there were not a goodly number of cases where individuals rebelled against this new authority.

2. All along the mountain ranges from Virginia to Alabama there was considerable opposition to the War of Secession. Quite a number of people in these mountain regions joined the Union Army when the Southern states seceded. Quite a number of others entered the Confederate Army under protest. During the last years of the War numbers of men in this mountain region deserted the Confederate Army. When the War ended the Confederacy had been wiped off the map, and there was no government left with power to punish these deserters. In fact, during the period of reconstruction numbers of them were rewarded with petty local offices, and numbers drew pensions from the Federal Government. A great many of the desertions in North Carolina are in this mountain section, and the deserters are men closely related to or affiliated with the families of men who deserted the Confederate Army; in fact, in one county, I am informed, that every deserter is either the son or the grandson of a man who deserted the Confederate Army. These young boys have been led to believe that if they can stay in hiding until after the War is over, that they can then come out without fear of punishment of any kind.

3. Cheap two by four politicians in every section of the State cautiously put out the suggestion that this is a Democratic war, and that two years from now a Republican will be elected President and the war will be ended and a general pardon granted to all delinquents and deserters.

All these things contribute to and explain the desertions that have taken place in North Carolina. I am doing my level best to deal with this situation in a way that will induce North Carolina delinquents and deserters to voluntarily return to their commands. I am profoundly convinced that in nine cases out of ten there desertions are due neither to cowardice nor to lack of patriotism, but to ignorance and misinformation.

There was a recent outbreak in Ashe county in which one deserter and one civilian was killed. I went to Ashe county in person, talked to the people for two hours and a half about the war, and the result of the visit is that practically all deserters and delinquents in that county have voluntarily come in and gone back to their commands. In each case I gave to the soldier thus voluntarily returning a letter to the commanding general of the camp begging for the largest measure of mercy possible, and recording my belief that these men having truly seen the error of their way would now make fine soldiers if given an opportunity to do so.

I earnestly hope that you will see fit to direct the military authorities to adopt a policy of the greatest leniency to all soldiers thus voluntarily returning to camp. These men have morally and spiritually about faced. They sorely need and, in my opinion, deserve another chance.

I furthermore suggest that you direct the camp officers to hereafter give to the men, as they are drafted in, lectures upon the moral duties of a soldier, upon the pains and penalties of desertion, upon the moral turpitude involved in departing from the camp without leave, and have them especially explain to the soldiers from the South the difference between the situation that will confront them at the end of this war, and the situation that confronted a deserter from the Confederate Army at the end of the Civil War. In my speech in Ashe county I tried to make it plain that at the end of this war Uncle Sam would be doing business at the same old stand; that he would have a considerable army with very little for it to do, and that these returning soldiers would take peculiar pleasure in running down and bringing to justice the men who deserted them in time of war.

I am of opinion that if these truths should be impressed upon the soldiers when they come into camp, the number of desertions would be greatly reduced.