St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1889-09-05
RoUsED 4 MARES NEST.
A Member of the Sixth Minnesota
Defends the "Basket-Make rs"

A Member ofthe Sixth Minnesota
Defends the "Bas Max ers"
The remark made by Patrolman De-
laney, of Minneapolis, and credited to
the GLOBE, referring to the Sixth Min
nesota as "basket-makers," seems to
have stirred up hornets nest. Alfred
j. Hill, of St. Paul, who was member
of Company E of that regiment, is posi-
lively wrought up. and writes letter
on the subject. He says:
THE words which the men of the
regiment should have right to con-
slider libelous are the following: 'BaS-
ket makerS?-Why, the Sixth Minnesota
fellows. You. see when they couldn't
be made to fight their guns were taken
away from 'em, and they were set at
making baskets for the earthwOrkS.
Some call the regiment the Bloody
Sixth because it would run at the sight
of blood, l suppose" was a private
in Company E OF said regiment, detailed
from the fall of '64 to the end of the
war as clerk of my company-so that,as
it happened, never saw the baskets in
question, having enough to do to attend
to my accounts. | do remember, how
ever, about the men being sent out daily
for time to make baskets which L
supposed were to be used as gabions
"a cylindrical wicker basket, open at
both ends, and filled with earth. used
in the construction of the parapet of
trenches, batteries, ETC.. also for cover
ing working partieS). Our service had
been so much in the Indian
country that L had not seen any
operations in the way of attacking forti-
fed places. and III the innocence of my
heart supposed that this basket work
was in the regular military routine, and
incurred no more disgrace than the
scavengering of camps and cleaning up
of barracks-technically called policing
and other such manual employments:
and, indeed. that the essence OF sol
dier'S life was duty. e., obedience of
orders, whether they be to stand up and
he shot in pitched battles or to dig
sinks. l was little surprised, there
fore. to hear on. think. the second
morning, that our men had been jeered
at as ''basket Makers" and | can re-
member a repartee of one of them, as
told to me. Yes, we make baskets for
you fellows the Seventh Minnesota) to
lie behind
with regard to any charge of cow
ardice, know nothing of such. The
men of the Sixth regiment had very
little chance to show their courage in
battle, but presume that if they had
been in forty-one battles, more or less,
they would have done about the same
as other Union soldiers did. To my
own knowledge neither my gun nor
those of others of Company E were
trken away. and had those of the rest
of the regiment been taken | could not
have failed to become aware of it.
''ln the Campaign of Mobile by
Gen. c. &. Andrews, will be found four
references to the Sixth Minnesota (see
index, but not one of them gives any
grounds for an unfavorable opinion of
it 10 be formed in the readers mind.
elf Mr.. Delaney personally knows
that the Sixth Minnesota men had their
guns taken away from them for coward
ice let him make affidavit to the fact,
and publish it. Ii he has been imposed
on bv a cock -and-bull story let him eX-
press regret through the papers for hav-
ing been led to believe falsehOod; or,
finally, if he never said anything at all
about the regiment, let him Indignantly
write to the editor repudiaIing the state
ment attributed to him. Should he do
none of these things he must be cOnsid-
cred as being in deliberate disobedience
of certain system of regulations far
more ancient and important than that
of any police department or national
ARMY mean that code accepted alike
by Israelites and Christians, called the
Ten Commandments, of which he will
have broken the one reading, Thou
shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbOr,"