REGIMENTS, OFFICERS, AC.    39

ture necessity of keeping a careful record of the names of all the
soldiers, and, especially, the names of their places of residence, at
the time of enlistment, and apparently forgetting that there might
be more than one John Brown in the State. Up to 1862, tne
record, as to place of residence, was very imperfect.

General Head, upon assuming the office as Adjutant General of
New-Hampshire, in March, 1864, immediately set himself to work
to remedy, as far as could be, this imperfect record, which may be
of vast importance to many widows, twenty-five or even fifty years
hence. General Head’s version of the office, at the time he as-
sumed its duties, will give a more correct idea how the records
had been kept. He says: “ No record whatever existed of thou-
sands of New-Hampshire’s bravest sons who had entered the service
of the United States, in their country’s hour of peril, determined to
sustain the national government, to defend our flag, to defend the
principles of liberty and justice, and to perpetuate those free in-
stitutions which are dear to the heart of every true American.
Hundreds of New-Hampshire’s noble men, of whose names, even,
there was no record within our State, had yielded up their lives
upon the field of battle. Hundreds again had been honorably dis-
charged from the service, and returned to their homes with bodies
maimed and constitutions shattered, and yet the State possessed no
record by which justice and honor could be rendered these brave
men.”

The military records of our soldiers who served our country, are
to-day, as complete as in the War Department at Washington, and
Gen. Head has been complimented from that Department, that
New-Hampshire had the best record of enlisted men, of any State
in the Union. This nearly perfect record, in the Adjutant Gen-
eral’s office of our State, has been accomplished through the untir-
ing energy of Gen. Head, and when our soldiers fully understand
the necessity of an accurate record of their enlistment, and of their
services in the field, they will render to him the full credit to which
he is rightfully entitled.

The busy quiet to be seen in our fields, our work shops and our
mercantile streets, would hardly lead any one to believe that our
country, from centre to circumference, less than nine years ago, re-
sounded with the clash of arms, and many of New-Hampshire’s
sons were engaged in deadly conflict, to sustain the free institutions
which to-day we are so peacefully enjoying. But truth, apparently,
in this case, seems a fiction.