The Oskaloosa herald., 1894-05-31
our ARMIES III THE FIELD.
Their Temperance and General Morality
Surprised European. a

-
Their Temperance and General Morality
| Surprised a European. a
Let it be, however, distinctly under
stood that in the field and in camp the
Union army, which. as l have previously
said, was eventually 1000, 600 strong,
was, so far as therank and file were con-
cerned, wholly and completely teetotaI
army Not one drop of whisky, wine or
beer was allowed to beseld at the can,
! teens. Small quantities of whisky were
from time to time smuggled in, and this
| contraband liquor was usually contained
in shallow, obtopg TASKS made up to re-
semble Bibles and Testaments, with neat
metal clasps. 1t was the officers, however,
and not the men, who were, as arule, able
10 obtain these surreptitious supplies Of
/ bourbon, and l remember once reading
! ina Washington paper a pathetic letter
! from one of the wearers of the sky blue
! gabardines in which he professed his
| great love for Scriptures, but objected
| to seeing Testament staggering about
with pair of shoulder straps on--em-
broidered shoulder straps being the char
acteristiC mar a commissioned officer
The Federal troops were able to dis
pense with strong drink owing to the
amazingly good care which had been be-
! slowed on their personal comfort by a
| body called the sanitary commission, OF
which there were branches all over the
north and which were able to deal with
immense sums of money. In aid of their
| Ia La11z Eos
| quently held, and the voluntary contri-
buttons formed in addition a tremendous
aggregate. 1t was not only medicines
and hospital appliances that the sanitary
commission supplied to those whowere
! fghtingfor the Union. 1t supplemented
in hundred different ways the abnor-
mally abundant rations served out by
the government to the soldiers. y
sgOne other equally significant fact is
| Htatedl with regard to the wonderful
Army of the Potomac. These legions
were governed practically yAwithout cor
| pofal punishment; nor, save in very
| few instances when some peculiarly
heinous offense against military law had
| been committed, was the punishment of
| death inflicted I remember when was
down with the Federal army in Vir-
ginia seeing at the general headquarters
wretched creature, delinquent sol
dier,s who, under the grim guard of a
sentry, was sweeping alithe refuse away
and shoveling it into baskets. He was
| to endure so many hours of this humili-
citing drudgery for so many days, as he
had been guilty, so was told, of some
exceptionally disgraceful crime. Now
and again some martinez commanding
officer would venture upon course of
procedure slightly analogous to bodily
/ punishment. l have heard of offending
soldiers being spread eagleG"-that is
to say, tied, by the wrists and ankles to
the wheels of gun or an ammunition
wagon and left bareheaded for a certain
time in the blazing sun. But these Ger
tainly indefensible punishmentsY were
very rarely resorted to,
Remembering that the use of the cat
| was common in the British army during
the Crimean war and that fogging in
! the army was not totally abolished until
the passingyo the army discipline act in
April, 1881, and. that in the French army,
although corporal punishment had long
since disappeared from it, the death pen
atty was frequently enforced, it can
scarcely have failed tostrike an onlooker
with astonishment that the American
commanders should have been able to
preserve discipline among the hundreds
of thousands of men serving under them
without flosging them and withouthang-
ing or shooting them in proportion even
remotely approaching the infiction Of
such extreme penalties in the French
army. =
| It must be remembered, moreover, that
the b1uebellies comprised in their ranks
an astoundingly miscellaneous congre-
cation of humanity. There was truly a
very numerous element of sternly reso-
Lutte, ,unfinchingly energetic soldiers,
who were fighting not only for the unity
of the republic, but for conscience sake,
and would have regarded the cause of
the emancipation of the negro as a kind
of holy war. These. practically the wor-
thy descendants of the old Puritans,
were, the leaven that gave life and vigor
to the whole Federal army.-G. A. Sala
in London Telegraph.