The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1894-05-24
JUST FOR A CHANGE.

staff at work for a little while on q new
line of pension sensation? Won't il
give agreeable variety to its "exposi-
tons" by showing something of how
rapidly men were qualified for pensions
along in 1865?
Let it begin, for example, with the
little army of 10000 men which Grant
led through the mud and rain in Feb
ruary, 1862, up to Forts Henry and
Donelson, and describe how the resolute
young men composing it foundered
through the swamps and swollen
rivers, until they shut up
$1,000 armed rebels in their
stronghold at Donelson how they
fought with them for nearly a week,
lying in the mud, without fires or shelter,
while the pitiless sleet beat upon them
how they fought desperately until the
ground was covered with dead and
wounded, and at last compelled the sur
render of $4,000 of their enemies. To
fair-minded man it would seem that
every one of those heroes richly earned
a pension then and there, if they had
gone no farther in the war.
But what was left of them, reinforced
by thousands of new recruits, went on
up to Shiloh, where they met in SAN
culinary battle all the host that Albert
Sidney Johnston could gather from the
Confederate portion of the Valley of the
Mississippi. When that two-days battle
ended fully one-third of Grants army
was dead or wounded. Again the
army was filled up with new men and
by bringing in those who had been
fighting at New Madrid, Island No. 10
and elsewhere, and Grant led 100000
men to Vicksburg in the great task of
opening up the Mississippi. In those
gloomy, malarious swamps they toiled,
dug, lived, and fought during the dreary
Winter of 1862, '63; thousands of them
found shallow graves on the crumbling
levees, and thousands more were sent
home wrecked for life. With the Spring
came their daring advance around
the tanks of the rebel stronghold /;
their hazardous crossing the mighty
river in the face of the enemy
their perilous thrusting of themselves
into the very jaws of destruction,
by interposing between two masses
of the overwhelming rebel host; their
victorious battles, and the long siege Of
Vicksburg, eliminating after untold
dangers and privations in the surrender
of 10000 rebels, and the removal of the
last mighty obstacle to the Mississippi's
flowing unvexed to the sea-" They had
destroyed more Of the enemy than they
had numbered when they crossed the
river, but this had been done at
frightful cost to themselves, and every
minute of that long campaign qualified
some man for place on the pension-roll.
Next we find the remainder of these
men, joined with others, battling for the
possession of Chattanooga, and waging
fierce war on the nights of Lookout and
Mission Ridge.
Again strengthened by fresh levies of
resolute, patriotic young men, they be-
gan the great campaign for Atlanta,
and for 100 sanguinary days fought
from mountain-top to mountain-top, un-
til at last Atlanta is ours, and fairly
won." 1t took eight months more of
marching through Georgia, besieging
Savannah, wading, marching, corduroy
ing, and fighting through the swamps of
the Carolinas, before their work was
done.
The work of that army alone is cheaply
represented by 100000 names on the
pension-rolls, and an annual expendi-
ture of s150,OOO,OO0 for pensions.
Let the Times take up few of these
facts and present them in "Pension
Supplement-" as companion picture
to its misleading stuff about the "Ex-
travagance of Pension Legislation"
THIRTEEN HUNDRED lost umbrellas
are among the debris Of the Worlds