The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1885-09-03
THE O. M. D.
The Grand Work 1t Did i'm the War.

4
read over that we fought 22 years ago. Indeed,
| we'll do we remember that even an intelligent
Subord mate officer or private, although he par
! ticipated in an engagement, yet he never knew
| the sum total concerning the engagement until
he found it cooked up" in some of the met
ropolitan journals Well do we remember sew
cral of the correspondents of the New York
| Herald, Tribune. etc. whose makeup of the bat
tie was often done in our headquarters, or, more
properly, 80 the hindquarters"
As the natural body is composed of its vari-
Gus parts-the head, the body, arms and legs,
| thus Is an army constituted, which is we'll IL
Illustrated by Jane Taylor's description of the
workings OF the clock-it is not all due to the
face and hands, which gives us the time. The
cost of the rebellion we assume to be about
| five thousand millions of dollars. Two ffths
| of this vast sum was expended by the q. NJ.
Dept, i. e., almost $2,0O0,000,00 aud, as Gen.
Nj. {. Meigss final report FEB. g, 1882, shows,
with less loss and waste than ever before
| known of the expenditure of such vast treas
ure, which is being studied by the military
nations of Europe" Looking at the Army
Register" of 1863 one sees Gen. Meigss reg
ment" in numbers (about 1000. Captains and
A. q. Ms the wheels within the q. M.
Dept clock. We lesser wheels cOncede that
our respected Chief, Gen. Meigs was the main
spring the head. However large a sum we
may name, every person knows the unit is the
| beginning of the sum total. Thus, as a humble
unit, will we testify even more practically.
| what we know about the q. NJ. Dept than even
| the learned Horace Greeley as to what he knew,
only in theory, about farming.
| From 1S43 to 1855 we were an active men,
| Der of the Rochester Union Grays, then in high
renown, which fact we mention as bearing on
the point of supposed fitness for our first assign
ment for duty-in charge of Beaufort, n. c.,
the ocean gateway to the Department of North
| Carolina, which was also the largest naval STA
Il fhar oil tha
coast expeditions rendezvoused, such as the
| Foster expedition against Charleston in De-
cember. 1862, and January, 1868; Buffers expe-
ditiOn against Fort Fisher, Failure December,
1864; Terry's expedition against Fort Fisher,
(successD January, 1865; lastly, Schofelds
army landed there in March, 1865.
! But, like the chestnut in its burr tits abatis
of naturel Cape Lookout, ~ miles long, is its
gIacis, and the channel, six miles long, is the
ditch" to be "scaled" TO run it never is
attempted only by daylight, and only then
under the charge of licensed bar pilot Said
bar is literally an ocean death-trap, as its name
indicates, which is lighted, in peace, bya first
class light" which was stolen by the rebels on
the opening of the war in 1861, and replaced
again in 1862; then blown up" by rebels in
April, 1864, which we may write about here
| after.
| The engineers are the head Of an army-fg
! uratively, the 81 brains " that plan the battles;
y, Il
| the infantry, the arms and the q. NJ. Dept,
| the legs: while the cOmmissary provides for
| the stOmachs of the bipeds, the ordnance pro-
| vides ammunition for stomachS of the arms,
and the doctors provide for the wounded and
| sick-thuS altogether, constitute the concrete
| army, or, like Jane Taylor's clock, all parts
! keep time to the music of the tune America"
Many brave body has accused the legs of cow
ardice for disgraceful retreats from battlefelds-
e. g. Bull Run. Gems. Grant, Sherman, Sheri
dan 10. Johnston, etc. all learned their first
lessons in the school of the soldier" in the
| q. Nj. Dept preparatory to commanding armies.
| Gen. Ingalls, the present @. nj. Gen., was the
| Chief q. NJ. in the field on Gen. Grants staff,
! from whom we have often received orders to be
| obeyed. The general duties of line officers are
routine; whereas those of the Q. M. Dept are
miscellaneous as well as routine f. g., as all
are aware, slavery was the primary cause of
| the war. The Commander in Chief, or Presi-
| dent, issued The Proclamation Act" which
was the fat that the strong military arm must
| execute; otherwise the fiat was only empty
words as he said, Upon which all else chiefly
| depends" 1t would be inhuman to destroy
slavery, then starve the slaves. Our relations to
and with the slaves will doubtless illustrate the
modls operandi as to how the slaves were led
out of bondage. All the slaves in our military
sub-district were specially under our charge, to
| be compelled to work in mental employments,
n0letas polens, in building forts, do;ks hospitals,
| teamsters, wood cutters, ocean aud land trans
| portatiOn, railroads, stevedores, carpenters,
lumbermen, etc. From slaves they became
| "COntrabands," and finally became freedmen.
| The institution became a moral problem in
the keeping of G. Ms, to work. clothe and feed
them, as soon as the army controlled the dis
trict. The private soldiers prejudices often
seriously objected to coming in competition
| with the slave laborer as a slave. Hence it was
only as a derHier resort that detailed white
men" were made to serve in the Q. NJ. Dept,
because of the higher paid volunteers" for this
department the supply was greater than the
demand.
The only "Freedman's Bureau" in our district
was the O. NJ Dept up to 1864. Many of these
sable bOndsmen bore familiar distinguished
names both foreign and domestic. Our No.
2" reports to the Government as carrying on
our roll the name of Cesar tboth Julius or Au-
gustus he was named after; Napoleon Bona
parte for short we called him BOny "; Han
nibal; George Washington, and his wife, too,-
her name was Martha; for short was called
Dolly" The euphony of these graceful
names were marred by being mixed in with
Sambo Coon, Cufy Bell, etc. Well, thought
we, what is there in a great name?
| In August, 1862, it became military ne
cessty " to place on board U. S. transport steam
er Guide, Capt. Ed. Z. Vail,) bound from
Beaufort N. c., to New York city Capt. V.
now keeps the st. Augustine Hotel, Fla -
slaves, good seamen. George Washington was
one of them while his wife Martha, or Dolly,
as she was called, remained behind, slave.
Singular to tell, the whole u of them skipped
out for Canada on landing in New York city,
| George Washington amongst the rest, and Mar
tina was glad George skipped. Maj. Stewart
| Van Vliet Q. NJ, then in charge of New York
| city ocean transportation, said in substance
| (about restraining them he would sooner I'M
dertake to stop up the North River from flow
| ing out into the ocean than to stop those II
North Carolina negroes from running away if
| they willed it to 20. A small cyclone blew at
| Beaufort on the return of the Guide with
| $4,000 of slave property gone up" Capt "
was first blamed, but we took the responsibility
under the plea of military necessity" and now
we report them as expended in service"
The Proclamation Act soon followed, and the
bOndsmen were never required TO pay sou for
those II negroes. All the hundreds of others
on our roll took the benefit of the act, and both
the master and slave were declared bankrupts
and all Indebtedness pro and con cancelled and
it was as President Lincoln said in the Fort
Monroe conference in 1865, both parties here
after must root hog or die" Even on Jan. l,
1863, when the act tolled slavery's death at
midnight still it remained for us to settle some
knOtty questions in the new relations of land
lord and tenant Shakspere's ShylOck was at
tempted to be played by a few of the Shylock
Manifestations j. BOWEN, Rochester, n. Y.