The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1898-09-28
Some Thoughts on the War.
Il tidntd Journal.

Now that the wal is over and news
papers, sympathizins women and tcor-
stained old fools of the male persuasion
have wiped their eyes. let MS glance |
over the situation and then quit talking
about the terrible suffering of OUT
army
TO begin with, there was il battle ut
such II name. In the war between the
States it would have hardly risen above
the plane of Il skirInisll, or to make tho
InO5t OF 1t, u Reconnaissance in force,
The men sent there, besides the rcyu-
lars, were all selected from the north
crn States, the southern troops not
being classed as equal to the emergency,
though l believe the excuse was they
were not properly equipped, though II
that were the case the government was
to blame.
| imagine that Shaftcr has thanked
Goa many times that General Wheeler
happened to be properly equippcd' in
time to go. There was II campnign of
IL few days, 200 men were killed, 1,4OO
were wounded, and then came the
most impassiOned. heartrending np-
peuls from both officers and men to hc
sent home.
No troops ever endured SO much. A
cry from one regiment that for two
days they had starved OH nothing to
eat but meat, bread and coffee. How
old Confederate soldiers smiled when
they saw that. "Meat. brcnl and cOf-
Tee y why, God bless You, what would
For the last two years of the war they
often went for days with nothing but Il
pint of meal, not Il smell Of meat, and
az Tor coffee, If ever Il poor devil got q
taste of that it came through II '.swup"
with yankee picket or out of II dead
yankees haversack.
And then those impossible muddy
roads that confronted them before
reaching SantiagO--wercn't they terri
Bile! I'll venture they were heavenly
paths compared to that road over the
Pcnnsylvania mountains where Gene
raj Lee marched his entire army from
Gettysburg. in that all-night rain,
knec-deep i'll mud, covering only ten
miles i'll ten hours, but without the loss
OF wagon or a gun. 1t certainly must
have been soft lot of material for
soldiers sent to Cuba, the Rough Riders
included.
There has been pathetic howl about
the hospital service, and it's dolli rs to
dimes that there's not an old soldier in
the country to-day who will testify that
during the civil war here was one,
north OF south, that would equal in
efficiency even that second division
lioSpAtul NlilChstliltuku. KNOW
there was not Ill the south; yet ii all
the northern newspapers have said
about them is true, Andersonville was
n Paradise to the best of the lot.
The Sharpsburg campaign was fought
through OH q nutritious diet of green
apples and green corn, and our hospi-
tnls were barns and negro churches in
Winchester, Va. The writer was one
OF the fortunate number who obtained
06t - 4 1.,l
pews joined together for IL bed and
muddy old blanket for Il covering.
Perhaps his life was spared OH account
of the lice eating up the germs"
remember that train OF rough farm
wagons, impressed in PENNSYLVANIA,
nearly, forty miles long, filled with
wounded and sick Confederate soldiers,
az they jolted through Maryland into
Virginia, through days and nights
ever. grooming and dying by scores,
the we'll ones finally dumped into what
were called hospitals by cOurtesy, and
contrast that with the treatment. our
men nave received in the present war
and wonder it our people have any
conception of what war means. l
would like to see the old vet who ever
of it. 80 '''NA WV ''''"
am afraid if the truth is sifted out
1t Will show that i'll the war Just
brought to Il close our soldiers have
been overfed, and through that and
inconsistencies their stOmachs event
back" OH them. The lack of sanitnry
prccaution may have had something to
10 with 1T, but l confess that through
four years OF service in the COnfedc-
rate army never heard such word us
'sanitatiOn," and have been campcd
for months i'll the same place, the
whole army together, the only solici-
tude being the scarcity of rations and
wood, and as for water, just SD the
branch was deep enough. to ain!: Il can
teen i'll, it was sufficient, without re-
gard to color or previous condition."
mc cntiru wiutuI ri ioo1Gi wu iiiivui;; iii
the trenches at Petersburg minus tents
or huts and not half enough to eat, and
there was not as much growing in all
that time as we have heard from our
| army in the past three months.
But we. can say it with pride, not IL
Whimper from our southern boys, ana
if we didn't know it was fact that
Fitzhugh Lee was at Jacksonville (the
camp we would naturally look to first
for disease and death) with 10000 men,
the country would hardly know there
was such O body Of men attached to
the United States army.
geo Dy the newspapers that one
Colonel refused to move his regiment
from Montauk Point until Pullman
cars were furnished. When the starved
army Of Northern Virginia were parolcd
Mt AppOmattox Court House they ac-
cepted a little bread aud meat with
out cOffee) from General Grant and
were glad enough to foot it six or
seven hundred miles to get home.
OLD VET.
Washington, Ga, Sept. is.