Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/92

 said that enough companies had been tendered to make five additional regiments. In anticipation of further calls for troops from time to time the Governor had recommended that all companies thus raised should keep up their organizations and devote as much time to drill as they could spare without interfering with their ordinary business. This would give the State a large reserve force of partially drilled troops to meet future calls. The Governor urged the enactment of military laws that would enable the State to promptly meet all requisitions of the General Government for troops, and also enable the State authorities to protect the citizens from invasion on the south and from Indian hostilities from the west. He also urged the appropriation of funds to meet all expenses which might be incurred by the exigencies of war, and, further, to provide aid for the families of volunteers who entered the military service.

The Legislature remained in session but two weeks, promptly dispatching the business for which it had been convened. It framed a general militia law providing for the raising of two regiments of infantry, one regiment of mounted riflemen, one squad cavalry and two battalions of artillery for the protection of the southern and western borders of the State. An act was passed authorizing the issue and sale of State bonds to the amount of $800,000 to provide a war and defense fund. A commission was appointed, consisting of S. R. Ingham, John N. Dewey and I. W. Griffith, to audit all claims and bills paid out of the funds thus raised. The Governor was authorized to purchase arms and other war supplies; to pay volunteers until they were mustered into the service of the United States; to authorize counties to aid families of soldiers in the service; to provide staff officers for the Governor as Commander-in-Chief of the State troops, to prohibit the commencement of any civil suit against a soldier during his term of service, and grant a continuance of any suit pending.

The extra session of the Legislature met the emergency