The Richmond palladium. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1855-1875, 1863-05-08

Advance copies of the three volumes ct
the report and evidence taken before the
Committee on the Conduct of the War have
lust been furnished to the various cores
pondents OF the press.
These volumes make in the aggregate
nineteen hundred and twenty eight large
octovo pages.
GEN. BUTLER on LIQUOR.
II appears from cursory glance at the
document. that Major General Benjamin F.
Butler was asked whether intoxicating liq-
usrs are used in the army.
To this Gen. Butler replied as follows:
They are, to most woful extent"
As an illustration General Butler said:
1--WE used TO send a picket guard up
mile and a half from Fortress Monroe. The
men would leave perfectly sober, yet every
night when they came back we would have
trouble with them on account of their be-
ing drunk Where they got their liquor
from we could not tell. Night after night
we Instituted vigorous examination, but it
was always the same. The men were ex
amined over and over again; their canteens
were inspected, and yet we could find no
liquor about them.
AT last it was observed that they seemed
to hold their guns up very straight. and
upon an examination being made it was
found that every gun-barrel was filled with
whiskey-and it is not always the soldiers
who do this
81 ordered a search of the Adams Ex-
press Company, and examined the pack
ages sent to the soldiers by their friends.
and in one day | have taken one hundred
and fifty different packages OF liquor from
the trunks, boxes and packages sent to the
soldiers by their sympathizing friends at
home"
General Butler says he took measures to
suppress this abuse.
LIQUOR IN BLENKER's DIVISION.
Captain Williams, Brigade Commissary
in Gen. Blenker's division, said, in answer
to the question as regards sobriety etc,
Il think there must be in that division
not less than fifteen, and probably as many
rs twenty five, establishments where they
sell liquor, lager beer especially, and they
4, all have whiskey, that they sell privately al
the same stands. But lager beer is the
principal article they deal in-that they
deal out in great abundance. 1t is all over
the division. | do not think there is a
tent in the division but what has more or
less of it. All the suffers keep il, and all
the stands are Gro wded all the while.
~ think it safe to say that you can 90
I there any cay in the week ard find on an
| average five hundred men in that division
J who you would say were unfit for duty
drunk enough to put the whole division to
flight on the field of battle.
II know of no other remedy in the
: world that you can devise, except to cut
off liquor from officers and ALL or to break
up the division: separate the brigades, and
put them in other divisions with good com
manders.
/. 1t yon were to separate them and put
them in other divisions with good command
{, good sober officers, think they would
! make good soldiers. The soldiers are all
! Germans. l do not think there are one
hundred Americans in the whole division u
The above are two of the most remark
able cases of excessive drinking, but it g
unfair to Judge. by them. the morals of the
army, Since the testimony was taken,
more than year ago, the liquor supplies
have, TO very considerable extent, been
abridged