Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1881 — Cleaning Out the Sutler. [ARTICLE]

Cleaning Out the Sutler.

The army sutler was the soldier’s best friend and worst enemy. He was looked npon as an extortioner, and therefore an enemy, and yet he was regarded as a friend who stood between the soldier and hunger. There were occasions when regimental wagons could not “get there,” but it was only on rare occasions that the sutler’s wagons could not pull through. It is true, he asked a big price for his cakes, cheese and canned goods, but he had taken big risks in following the regiment. All things considered, the sutler did not deserve the reproach bestowed upon his calling. He ran risks which only brave men take, and his expenses sometimes devoured his profits, large as they seemed. Very few of them made any great amount of money, and scores of them were financially busted by raids and robberies. From first to last the sutler was considered fair game for any one who could beat him, and when he could not be tricked he could be cleaned out. This latter process was the darkest mystery in army life. No one seemed to plau or to lead, and yet all seemed to understand. At a given moment from tyen-ty-five to one hundred men would suddenly appear at the sutler’s tent, or hut, and go through him like a hurricane. The blow fell so quickly that there was no dodging it, and the guards arrived too late to make an arrest or save anything. At the remount camp at Pleasant Valley, in 1865, thirty men fell upon the sutler’s cabin about five minutes after roll-call. It was a stout log hut, securely barred and bolted, and contained S7OO worth of stores. The clerk, a young man of nineteen, slept within, armed with two revolvers. There was a grand yell, a crash, and all was over. In five minutes from the first alarm a guard was on the spot, but too late. The only articles left in the hut would not have sold for SSO. The clerk was outside in his night clothes, robbed of his arms and cash, and cheese, bags of nuts, boxes of candy and cases of tobacco and canned goods had disappeared as if taken up by the wind. A strict search was at once begun, but not so much as a nickel’s worth of the stolen property could be discovered. A hundred men were suspected and questioned, but not one could be held responsible. It was like the swoop of a hawk, as full of deadly vengeance. In 1862, in Richardson’s brigade of infantry, a sutler was cleaned out at noon in the midst of 4,000 men with their eyes open, and a thousand dollars worth of goods secreted in camp so well that only a dozen pen-holders could be found by the searchers. Twenty men did the business in about two minutes, and not one of them could be identified.