Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1898 — ANOTHER CHAPTER OF HORRORS [ARTICLE]

ANOTHER CHAPTER OF HORRORS

THIS ONE RELATES TO THE WAR BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. s' ' * • History Records a Startling Array of Proved Charges Against Democratic Incompetency and Mismanagement

We condemn in unstinted measure' the war department for the blunders and crimes committed against the brave boys in blue in camp and on foreign batltefields by selfish contractors, incompetent surgeons and vain, heartless army officers appointed for potitical purposes. IVe hereby pledge to our brave sailors and soldiers who survive this war our earnest and loyal support to secure the punishment of the guilty parties. Wisconsin Democratic Platform.

St. Charles, and there eat, drink and make merry, thus neglecting to do their duty to the soldiers, who are lying here without half enough to eat." One more quotation from this interesting diary of a private in the Second Pennsylvania volunteers. The date is only two days later than the anniversary on which the national Democracy, in remembrance of St. Jackson, always takes a double hitch in its trousers and exploits everythirfg Democratic, while crying out calamity and death as the sequence of trust in every other political party. But here is the quotation: '.‘This morning, instead of the scorching sun, it began to snow and rain, forming a pond of ice and water around our encampment. Ice and water ran into our tents, and, as the ground was low, all our quarters were overflowed. Tonight many soldiers hunted up slave huts aud are sleeping with slaves, cursing the day they went soldiering. Our blankets aud clothing are' frozen stiff aud bard. Every soldier is talking about bad treatment and hardships of 6oldier life.” We pass over this soldier’s trials and those of his comrades on board transports to Vera Cruz, except to state that added to their suffering from packed quarters, bad air, insufficient food and clothing, with no medical supplies, was the daily allowance of only a quart of water to each man for cooking, drinking and washing purposes. The condition of the army a few mouths later can be inferred from the mild depiction of its sufferings by Secretary of War Marcy, who said in his annual report: “The surgeons and assistant surgeons constituting the medical staff of the army are all required for the troops in the field, and it is ascertained by exthat they are scarcely sufficient for the exigencies of the service. The wants of the service have rendered it necessary to employ physicians in civil life to assist in the duties of the medical staff. This deficiency of medical assistance has been owing in part to the number of surgeons and assistants detached from troops in the field to take charge of the several hospitals which proper care of the sick and wounded have rendered indispensable.” This meant a demand for more surgeons. While the secretary of war was oalling for them, Acting Surgeon General Heiskell in his report made the startling admission that he did not know how many soldiers had been killed in battle, how many were in hospitals, how many were dying of wounds or disease. He said: “Owing to the almost total interruption of communication between the main army In Mexico and the coast since early in June, the reports of the sick and wounded have not been received from the medioal officers with that army for the last two quarters. It is quite probable also that their laborious duties in relieving the wounded and administering to their oomfort, left them but little time to make out in due season their quarterly reports. For these and other causes, I regret it is impossible to present with this report the usual consolidated report of the sick and wounded of the army for the year ending Sept. 30 last.” That statement was made to the secretary of war in November, 1847, but withal there was not a line or figure to show that he knew anything about even the siok and wounded who had been brought to hospitals iu this country, or the siok soldiers in them who, at any time, had been unable to go to the froi}t. The secretary of war had no data either. If he had he suppressed them, for not an intimation of them appeared in his report. He was content to let the people know that more surgeons were wanted aud to let them infer that the necessity for additional medical assistance arose from no extraordinary condition of suffering in the army. But while he was thus misleading the public, the American ranks in Mexico and the southern part of this country were being decimated more, by disease than by battle. A writer of that time, A. A. Divermore, wrote in his “Consequences of the Mexican War," the following description of conditions which the secretary of war and surgeob general refused to muke known to the public: "Fever, vomlto, dysentery, erysipelas and other diseases rage among the troops with terrible virulence. Far more perish iu the hospitals thau iu the field. The deaths at the City of Mexico among the American soldiery averaged' 1,000 u month for a considerable time after they occupied the ‘nails of the Monteziuuus’ aud 800 or 400 a month afterward. The wounded very generally died of the effect of the climate aud the uccess of Sickness. The fact, too, that so large a portion <1 the troops were ruw volunteers, wholly * uuused to a soldier’s life and often unwilling to sabmit to the necessary sanitary regulations of the army, accounts iu part for almost incredible expenditures of life.” As early iu the war as September, 1846, Geueral Taylor bogan to oall the attention of the war department to the frightful loss his troops were having by disease. On the 8d of the montii aud year named he wrote from Oamargo: "There has been great sioknees and mortality in the volunteer regiments.” He repeated the warning at Saltillo and from both Mier and Bueua Vista,

Thu war with Mexico was conducted by a Democratic administration to extend slavery; the war with Spain was , conducted by a Republican administration to free millions from the tyrrany, inhumanity and barbarity of a power that holds fast to the tortures of the middle ages; the great war against secession was conducted by a Republicad administration to make the union of the United States perpetual and to give freedom to millions of slaves. The latter cost • hundreds of thousands of lives, about { 13 per cent of the total enlistment for \ the northern armies. While the nation | sincerely mourns Buch a vast expendi- J tare, it rejoices in the benefits it brought and the mighty progress the Country has made through them. It is too early to figure the percentage •f loss in life of the second great and wonderfully successful effort to strike the shackels from the oppressed, but it is safe to say that it will not be 3 per atmt. The civil war called for in all *,778,304 men Of these 300,222 died of or wounds, or were killed in bat- «, tie. In the recent Spanish war there -were between 275,0U0 and 280,000 American volunteers, and so far the best estimates of deaths from all causes do not reach 8,000. That is what to secure freedom has cost Ae United States during the last 53 yt^s. In the Mexican war, from May, 1846, j to April, 1848, the whole number of vol- ( anteers mustered into the United States j service was 71,309, of whom only 68,926 were accepted. Altogether, including noncombatants, there were not more than 100,000 Americans engaged in active service against Mexico. The loss at life through battle and disease reached the enormous number, for so small an army, of 25,000, or 35 per cent. That is what the country had to sacrifice so that negro slavery in the laud of boastful freedom might have more territory to blight wi& its horrors. That frightful sacrifice was made by a Democratic administration solely for Democratic purposes and Democratic slavedrivers. "James K. Polk was president and William L. Marcy, secretary of war. Thus we have a mathematical setting forth like this: Cost of fistdom, civil war... 13 per eeut Cost of freedom, Spanish war 3 per cent Cost' of slavery, Mexican war S 3 per cent Kxcess of cost of slavery over civil war 13 per cent Excess of cost of slavery over Spanish war 33 per cent Excess of cost of slavery over both wars II per cent The causes of this tremendous sacrifice to further enslave the negro began through the mismanagement and cruelty of the Democratic administration before the volunteers got south of the Ohio river. As an example, the flowing from a Pennsylvania regiment, will serve: “About noon we arrived in Pittsburg. We formed in line aud marched to the wharf, where we were quartered In one of the large warehouses. It was the 15th of December and the weather was very cold, but we had no stoves or any place to make a fire. In a day or two we wero marched to the Amerioau hotel to be paid off. Each soldier received 921, less $5.50 for expenses incurred on our way to Pittsburg. Teu cents would have paid for all we got, for everything was given to the soldiers by citizens along the way. This caused considerable fuss, os there seemed to be no account given of the appropriation made for this express purpose.” Who was to blame for these soldiers’ sufferings in the d«ad of winter without fires? Who was responsible for not aoeountiug for the subsistance appropriation, but instead robbed each ooldier of 96.60 of his hard earned pay? The Democratic heart was fired by placing one of the oauA of rendezvous on the battlefield of Mew Orleans, a locality still extolled in song and speech on every recurring Bth of January. But the exalted spirit of St. Jackson hovering over the place 31 years to a aay after he had won his victory there, oould not restrain the soldiers called out by his party’s administration from complaining of hanger. It was on the great anniversary appropriated by Democracy that a soldier, fighting for more slave territory, wrote in his diary the following: “This morning, as usual, the soldiers are cursing tbe officers and quartermasters for not furnishing us with enough to eat. It ia, in fact, a perfect shame how the soldiers are treated in regard to provisions. If it was not for the little money the soldiers have, God knows how we would stand it. Nearly all our officers go to sew Orleans, stop at the

Aug. 4, 1847, sent the appalling information to Washington that: “Twenty-five per cent of my troops are disabled by disease at this moment.”

The next year General Taylor was at Port Hndson, La., where he made a speech, in which he said: “Of those who have died in active service in Mexico, the proportion of those cut down by disease to those who fell on the battlefield was five to one.” While-disease ran riot in the army of Taylor as he marched and fought his way down from the Rio Grande, the route of General Scott from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico was a pathway of death. When he reached Puebla June 4, 1847, he sent to Washington the astounding statement that: “The effective strength of my army has been suprisingly reduced. We left in hospital at Vera Cruz 1,000, as many sick and wounded at Jalapa, 200 at Pesoti and at Puebla we have 1,017 in the hospital. This general sickness may be attributed to several causes, contrasts in climate, insufficiency of clothing and want of salt meats. The prevailing diseases are chills, fevers and diarrhoea.” Scott’s loss by sickness and death up to the writing of this dispatch had been £5 per cent or more. He had left out of the armv he started with from Vera Cruz only a few hundred more than 10,000 men. This was in June, and in the month following at Puebla alone 2,302 of his, 10.000 were sick. Even in December, 1847, he had 2.041 sick in various hospitals, exclusive of those in the City of Mexico. And yet this fearful history of a Demcratic war to extend slavery is not at an end. Detail, a mere glimpse of it. makes the relation of this sacrifice more frightful. Out of 80 sappers aud miuers from West Point, who went with Scott, only 24 returned. The rest were left in graves in Mexico. In one year the Ninth infantry lost 625 out of 730. At the end of nine months the First South Carolina had only 90 men to go with Scott into the City of Mexico out of 1,100. The First Tennessee had 1,000 to begin with, but it lost at the rate of 50 a month. In August, 1847, when the First North Carolina came to be paid off, it was found that every fifth man had died since the muster rolls had been made up, two months before. The Mississippi regiment began with 80 or 90 in a company. The rate was soon cat down to 30. Out of 400 Georgians 40 were left fit for duty in the City of Mexico. General Pierce’s New Hampshire regiment wben it reached the Mexican capital had only 120 out of 848 that could be of any service. Colonel Baker had in his Illinois regiment 820 men to begin with. He lost 100 in six months in the Rio Grande valley. In addition 200 were dismissed to die by the way or find their way home with constitutions broken down. This was the Colonel Baker who was afterward in oongres&und was killed at Ball’s Blnff in the civn war. While in congress he said on the floor of the house, when the Mexican war was under debate, that “Two thousand young men, in whose veins flowed some of the best blood of the country, who had never seen the face of the enemy, were resting in the mould on the banks of the Rio Grande.” That is. Taylor lost 2,000 men by disease before he reached the enemy’s country. Again Colonel Baker said in congress when arraigning the inefficiency, incompetency and neglect of the medical staff: “Out of 18,000 volunteers of June and July, 1846. 7,000 or 30 per cent, are already dead aud gone. Iu a single hospital at New Orleans there were 650 sick soldiers at one time.” The January preceding the request of the secretary of war for more surgeons, and the surgeon general’s admission that he could give no statement as to the sick and wounded in hospitals, or of those killed in battle or who had died from disease, congress demanded a report from the adjutant general of the army. Feb. 4, 1847, he reported that within 60 days up to that date out of the volunteers there had been Ufinrtloiii 3XI Killed Iu battia 71 Died of disease <137 UltcliurgMl on aoconnt of disease. . 3,000 So great was the bitterness against the administration that a writer of the time, the same Mr. Livermore from whom quotation was made above, in estimating tne loss of life on both sides at the lowest figured 40,000, said: “This, immense loss of human life, with all its attendant evils aud woes aud pains, is chargeable upon the authors aud abettors of this tremendous system of legalized murder.” The transporting of the uiok and wounded home was most horrifying. It was a time of terrible mistreatment of ineu, who innooently enlisted to serve their country, but were called upon to fight that slavery might live uuder the perpetual rule of the Democratic party. Cue voyage home of the transport Virginia was a type of that service. This voyage was made in 1846, nnd a writer described it as follows: “Half of the men on the Virginia were wounded or sick, some having lost their legs, others their arms, others being wouuded iu arms aud legs. With all those wouuded, siok aud dying men not a surgoou or a nurse was sent along to atteud to not a particle of medioine, not a Pitch of a liuon for dreaaing a wound. This ia the usual manner of seudiug home the wouuded aud sick, seudlug them like old horses tired out to die." Here is a glance at oue of the hospitals of that droadful war. It is given by an officer, who, writing home from Matatuoias. said: “A mau gets siok and is carried to the hospital with his blauket nnd knapsack. Beil and beddiug there are none, and bedsteads or oots are not to be had. A blanket and the ground are therefore the couch upou which the volunteer lies sick aud

dies, if he does not recover. If he dies, he is buried with only his blanket aronnd him.” « Another wrtcer, a visiting editor, described the hospitals as follows: “They are places of overwhelming squalor, want and misery. They have no parallel except in Canadian emigrant sheds. Their conditions are outrageously offensive to every human sense, physical and moral.” , Still another wrote: “The sick receive no attention. All are broken, maiiy are destitute and individual charity ami help from triends constitute their only succor.” To crown this infamy of neglect and cruelty, when these poor wrecks were discharged . from the hospitals they were allowed only 20 cents a day for transportation aud subsistence in reaching home. All this is what the volunteers of the country got for serving in a Democratic war.