The Commissary-General’s Office has charge of all matters relating to the procurement and issue of subsistence-stores in the army.
The Paymaster-General’s Office has the general direction of matters relating to the pay of the army.
The Surgeon-General’s Office has charge of all matters relating to the medical and hospital service.
The Engineer’s Office, at the head of which is the Chief Engineer of the army, has charge of all matters relating to the construction of the fortifications, and to the Military Academy. At present, the Washington Aqueduct is being built under its direction. The Bureau of Topographical Engineers, at the head of which is the Chief of the Corps, has charge of all matters relating to river and harbor improvements, the survey of the lakes, the construction of military works, and generally of all military surveys.
The Ordnance Bureau, at the head of which is the chief of ordnance, has charge of all matters relating to the manufacture, purchase, storage, and issue of all ordnance, arms, and munitions of war. The management of the arsenals and armories is conducted under its orders.
The present building, still used for the War Department, is utterly inadequate to its necessities. Already its Bureaus are scattered in several transient resting-places. In a few years they will be again concentrated in the magnificent structure now going up, for the combined use of the State, War and Navy Departments.
With the present War Department building will be obliterated one of the oldest land-marks of the Capital. All through the war of the Rebellion, it seemed to be the temple of the people, to which the whole nation came up, as they did to the temple at Jerusalem. What fates hung upon the fiats which issued from its walls! Hither came mother, wife, and daughter, to seek their dead, and to supplicate the furlough for their living soldier. What times those were, when the very life of the nation seemed suspended upon the will of the great War Secretary. I cannot look at the trees which arch the avenue between the War Department and the President’s house, without thinking of those days when Lincoln took his solitary walk to and fro to consult with Stanton, his step slow, his eyes sad, over-weighted with responsibility and sorrow. And going down Seventeenth street, who that ever saw him can fail to recall the image of Stanton as he paced up and down before the door of the War Department for his half-hour’s exercise, when he held himself a prisoner within its walls.
All will soon be gone—the old familiar places as well as the old familiar faces. The grating of the trowel, cementing stone on stone, the ceaseless click of the hammer foretell how speedily the august stone structure, with graceful monoliths and turreted roof stretching over the vast square, will take the place of the old War Department.
The exigencies of war not only augmented the business of the War Department to gigantic proportions, but they created important Bureaus which have survived to flourish in times of peace; of these, none are so interesting, both to scientists and to citizens, as those connected with the medical history of the war. It may not be universally known to the public, but the medical profession has long been aware that the immense collection of cases and treatment, recorded in the field and hospital experiences of the late war, was being examined, condensed, tabulated, and the valuable conclusion, deducible therefrom, prepared for publication, under the direction of the Surgeon General of the army.
During the past few years “circulars” or detached portions of the work, of special interest, have been issued, and this spring two quarto volumes, being the first parts of the first two volumes of the entire work, have been given to the world.