Mr. SCHENCK. Mr. Speaker, it is not necessary for me to speak of the importance of the bill which we have now before us for consideration. It relates to the great arm of the public defense, to the number, classification, and condition of the troops necessary to constitute that arm as it shall hereafter be preserved for the public defense. This bill, embodying after much investigation and consideration the views of the ComMilAffrs, has been brought by them before the House with a renest, heretofore made to the House and which I now repeat, that we shall have, as we progress with the bill, the aid of the Representatives here assembled in putting the bill, by an requisite amendments, in such a shape as will best accomplish its great.objects and the good of the country, for which it is intended. I have very little to say in regard to the Generalfeatures of the bill except as they a all disclose themselves as we proceed in its consideration section by section, as the House has resolved to do. I will make, however, the energl remark that this bill is framed in conformity to the views of the Lieutenant General of the Army, sanctioned by the SecyWar, in so far as it regards the number of the standing Army proposed to be provided for the future protection of the country. According to the recommendations of those Officers, it provides for an Army which shall consist of 50,000 men, but. with an organization capable of expansion to 82,600. Gentlemen may differ with each other and with the committee in regard to what should now be the number of the standing Army of these U.S. I confess that the impression which has been upon my mind for man months, and which is not yet entirely remove, is that we ought to preserve an Army of at least 100,000 men. I, however, yield my own opinion it on that subject to the high authority of the fieutennnt General. whose view is concurred in by the SecyWar in his report, and sanctioned, I believe, by the President in communicating to us that reports I have been willing to take the standard which they propose, and which has been embodied as one of the general features of this bill. Some gentlemen, taking a different view, will doubtless claim that the reought to be either no standing army at all, or a very small one, perhaps not larger than that which existed liefore the war for the suppression of the rebellion, to serve only as a nucleus for expansion into such force as maybe needed by the addition of the militia an volunteer forces of the country that may be called out in any emer enc. Without going into a detailed statement of the reasons which led to the conclusion arrived at by the Lieutenant General, by the SecyWar, and by the committee, it will, in my opinion, be found that, in view of the vast extent of our sea coast, requiring rrisons at different points, not only upon the tlantic but also ii on the Pacific, including the whole coast of Ca ifornia; considering also the numerou interior posts of the country, and the probablt necessity, owing to the disturbed condition of the country, of keeping up here and there the nucleus of a force to be mobilized if occasion should renire in the southern districts of this conntry, the general number agreed upon is by no means too great. Taking in view all these elements of calculation, bearing in mind the garrisons that will be necessary for all our military posts and for the Indian frontier, and the force that will be required for the various expeditions which must from time to time be undertaken, and the troops that may he requi site in differentparts of the country for secu ring and preserving the public peace, the aggre gate cannot properly be less than that which the committee have made the basis of their bill. The bill which has been passed by the senate, and which is now before the ComMilAffrs, does provide for a smaller number, but only in this one particular: the Senate proposes 50 as the number of infantry regiments, while we have provided for 55, the latter being in accordance with the bill as originally proposed in the Senate, and in accordance With the recommendations of the Lieutenant General and the SecyWar, this reduction of 5 regiments apparentl for the purpose of crowding doubt eainng getting rid of the eteran Reserve corps. We retained the 55 regiments, using ten of them for the Veteran Reserve cor5. They would have but 50 regiments, an have the whole 50 to the exclusion of that corps, or in providing for new officers outside of that corps ereafter to be retained in the service of the country. Then as to the cost of the Army we propose, any gentleman who has looked at the public documents laid before the House is familiar with the fact that the appropriation made for the support of the Army and forces in the field during the last year of the rebellion was $516,000,000. The estimate, subject. however, to some small deductions for the reduction of Officers made in our bill the estimate submitted for an army to be retained such as we propose new by the billbefore the House was $33,000,000 in the aggregate, being about the 16th part of what it cost the country to retain the Army during the last year of the war. Another feature in this bill, in which there is a slight difference, (and gentlemen have requested me to state the differences between this and the bill which passed the Senate.) is in the number of colored troops retained. The Senate propose 8 regiments of colmed troops. The House proposes 8 regiments of colored troops so far as infantry are concerned. 2 regiments, c. the 12 regi ments of caval provided for in both bills, in the Senate bil it is provided shall be coll866 and cavalry. We him no such provision in the bill before the House. The bill, as I have already intimated, reserves for use in the service of the country a body called the Veteran Reserve corps, made up often of the 55 regiments of infantry, 8 others of the 55 being colored. I am aware there will be objection made in some ters to this preservation of that organization, to this provision for its being continued. I will not now, but will in the course of the debate on the section, go into any argument in respect to the retention of that corps. I will but any that this corps, which sprang from the mities of the war, which had its birth in the exi encies of that struggle, consisted of 2our regiments. It is proposed by the House bill, the features of wiic gentlemen desire to understand, to continue the Veteran Reserve corps, not to the number of 24 regiments, as provided for until the men were dischar d on their election, but of ten regiments on y, the officers to be taken from these regiments, not exclusively those who were oficers of the 24 regiments which heretofore existed, but. to be selected, by examination, fromthose officers and from all other wounded volunteer Officers who may have the requisite qualifications; the corps to have among its members, so far as the enlisted men are concerned, such enlisted men as may be found fit for light or garrison duty of any kind to be assigned for the purpose in this corps, together with such others as may be required to make up the whole corps, and who would be rejected on medical inspection without any such provision of law. Another feature of the bill is the preservation as a distinct bureau, of the Provost Marsha Generals office, the Provost Marshal General, and his assts. That section is one which will be the subject of objections by gentlemen. It will be for consideration when we come to that section whether it shall be retained or not as a part of the bill. I only pause to say in regard to it now, as it will be fully discussed hereafter, that this was a great means for recruiting and keeping up the Army, and the committee thought some such bureau was necessary for the purpose of recruiting, as the mode of procedure erctofore in the Army has been for the most a decided failure. It will be observed that the committee has deed from another general feature as exhibited in the bill which the Senate has laid upon our table. I am only doing justice by saying that in the last modification to the bill which passed that branch the Senate introduced the same thing proposed by the ComMilAffrs of the House. We have notcon fined the selections of officers to be appointed tofill up original vacancies in the various arms of the service to volunteer officers as was originally done, but it is proposed to extend them to all volunteers, whether officers or soldiers, who can by examination prove themselves possessed of the requisite qualifications, having regard to services in connection with those qualifications. There is another feature in the Senate bill differing very much from that contained in the substitute. here is a provision contained in one section of the Senate bill in regard to selections for the filling up of the officers of these newly organized regiments, that where 2/3rds shall be taken from the volunteer officers and soldiers, and the other 3rd shall be selected at the discretion of the President from the regular Army and elsewhere, all the regular Army officers who have during the war commanded volunteer troops shall be counted either as regular Army officers or as volunteers. It struck the committee of the House that here was a provision by which it might be possible, though I do not say it was so, for the regular Army officers who had not been in command of volunteer troops during the war, to carry away the 1st 3rd of the prizes, and then remit to the enjoyment of the other 2/3rds these regular Army officers who had commanded volunteer troops. gas oin i 21;. We do not adopt any such feature in the bill nowproposed and toavoidallpossible mistake we have inserted in lieu of it a section providing that no officer of the regular Army who has commanded volunteer forces during the war, shall on that account he held to be a volnn teer. There is another provision that is new a provision for revising the whole Army list, as itnow stands, in order to determine what officers may properly be retained in the service. This may Tue thought very radical. It may be thought that men who have enjoyed the advantage of their commissions in the regular Arm, whether appointed from the Military Aca emy, or from civil life, or from volunteers since the war began, should, by reason of being found now in the Army, continue there until regularly dismissed by court martial, and in that manner alone. The committee have thought otherwise, and that now, in this transition period, when we are establishing a new army as it were, taking the old Army and expanding and solidifying it, one mode of making the Army serviceable would be to haven general revision of all those who now constitute its officers, in order to determine whether they should all, or only a part of them, be retained. Accordingly we have introduced a provision which will not by any possibility interfere with many of the o the crs, and which i may not interfere with any and it is not a star chamber mode of procedure, but a fair mode by which every Army service shall be represented in a general council of officers, who shall allow the whole Army list to be retained; certainly all against whom there is no objection. Then, in regard to others, they are to report, not that a particular officer shall be dismissed or deprive of his commission, but simply that he shall come before the board and have his whole case fairly examined, after which the board shall resolve whether he shall continue in the Army or not. [Here the hammer fell.]