Therefore, provision was made for securing to
officers, who should leave the Army of the United States and join that
of the Confederate States, the same relative rank in the latter which
they held in the former.
"Be it further enacted that all officers who have resigned, or
who may within six months tender their resignations, from the
Army of the United States, and who have been or may be appointed
to original vacancies in the Army of the Confederate States, the
commissions issued shall bear one and the same date, so that the
relative rank of officers of each grade shall be determined by
their former commissions in the United States Army, held
anterior to the secession of these Confederate States from the
United States."
The provisions hereof are in the view entertained that the army was of
the States, not of the Government, and was to secure to officers
adhering to the Confederate States the same relative rank which they had
before those States had withdrawn from the Union. It was clearly the
intent of the law to embrace in this provision only those officers who
had resigned or who should resign from the United States Army to enter
the service of the Confederacy, or who, in other words, should thus be
transferred from one service to the other. It is also to be noted that,
in the eleventh section of the act to which this was amendatory, the
right of promotion up to the grade of colonel, in established regiments
and corps, was absolutely secured, but that appointments to the higher
grade should be by selection, at first without restriction, but after
the army had been organized the selection was confined to the army, thus
recognizing the profession of arms, and relieving officers from the
hazard, beyond the limit of their legal right to promotion, of being
superseded by civilians through favoritism or political influence.
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