Colonel William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston : His Service in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States.

my dear son: Your letter of May 14th, ult., concerning the nephew of Dr. L- B--, has been received. I have made inquiry respecting him, and am glad to learn that he is regarded as a worthy soldier. I have the power by the articles of war to discharge soldiers from the service, but it is an authority never exercised for private reasons. Great length of service, disability from physical or mental causes, etc., are some of the motives which would justify a department commander in exercising this power. If B-is ambitious he can be gratified; the door is open to all in the ranks. Having the prerequisite of a good moral character, the other qualifications can be obtained by proper industry. If he prepares himself for the examinations which must be gone through, I feel sure he will find no difficulty in procuring the recommendations of his company and regimental commanders to be allowed to be examined. The quality of the enlisted men of the army, morally and physically, is not well understood by the citizens. There exists so deep-rooted a prejudice against the soldiery that I must believe that, some time or other in our history as a nation or as provincials, they must have been intolerably bad. I think this is likely. Within my own knowledge of the reputation of this class of men, which runs back more than thirty years, they were very objectionable. I am glad to say that since my first acquaintance with them there has been a vast improvement, morally and physically. They were then said to be broken-down drunkards; now, physically, they are literally without blemish. After several minute inspections of the naked corpus by surgeons, they, if found perfect in their physique, are accepted; and, all being very young men, very few, if any, of them can have been injured by previous habits. A large majority of them write their names; so that there can be claimed for them, for their class, a high degree of intelligence. It is said many of them are foreigners; this is true, and in that they represent very perfectly the population of the country. Their pay, though nominally less than laborers', with all the advantages of clothing and food and physicians' bills free, with good care in the hospitals when they are sick, makes it appreciated by many as more desirable than the precarious wages of the laborer who may lose