The United States Soldiers' Homes was authorized by Congress in 1851. In 1827, while the Naval Asylum was under construction, Secretary of War James Barbour recommended that an Army Asylum be constructed for soldiers. For the next twenty years people like Major Robert Anderson (of Fort Sumter fame) promoted the idea of homes for retired soldiers, without success. The problem was to develop a system of funding a Soldiers' Home that would not involve any expenditure of public money. In 1846, he wrote to all the regiments in the active army, asking for information on fines and forfeitures from Courts Martial. He got answers from about half the regiments, added the twenty cents a month for the hospital fund received from the 9,438 enlisted soldiers then on active duty, and was able to estimate the annual revenue from both sources at $42,642, which turned out to be on the low side. "He computed the annual cost of each member, using the Army clothing allowance of that year of $15.36, and the annual cost of one year's ration at the prevailing rate of ten cents a day, to arrive at an annual cost for each member for these two items, of $51.86." He also went to the trouble of obtaining per annum inmate costs at five different East Coast insane asylums, and five different East Coast poor houses, which he reckoned at $43.80 per inmate, and sent the results, along with signed petitions from many of the Officer's Corps as the Army marched off to Mexico. Congress noted that "it does not ask for any contribution from the Treasury."