Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1899-02-09
NAL-w1IMINGToN DELAWARE. THURSDAY FEBRUARY 1892

ever his position or whatever society
he may belong to, to escape the just
censure that oil right-minded people
will heap upon him when he is proved
to be a scandal vilifier, and
a falsifier. This is bad enough in
itself, but when it goes so far as to
accuse some OF the most honorable men
in the army or out of it, and allege
that they aro corrupt, as you have done
in this letter, then it passes patience,
and your status or standing and the
society you belong TO can prove no eS
cuse whatever. You must bear the
consequences, and mean you SHALL.
In denouncing your letter as II tissue
of falsehoods, in denouneing you as a
liar, an unmitigated and infamous
liar, one who stirs up the whole
country with his lies and brings misery
and woe to the relatives Of soldiers at
the front by his lies, who quotes his
position as ---- to give himself char
acter and to sustain his lies, merely
deserves the greater censure. de-
mand from you an apology for your
letter, though 1 will willingly await
the Investigation which you suggest,
but il you do not cause that investi-
cation to be made, and you do not
apologize for your Infamous falschoods,
shall bring suit against you in New
York, and prove what l now charge
you to do.
wish to add that IL you were my
age | should make it my business to
personally wreak upon YOU the chas-
tisement you deserve, for do not be-
lieve there is within the confines Of
this country today anybody else so low
and vile as man who would make
such UNANIMOUSLY false charges against
men who arc doing their best, doing it
successfully, doing it better than you
ever saw done, better than you would
admit il you saw and knew it..
You say among other things, to
make our statement bear out the
semblance of truth, to convince and
worry the wife, the sister, the brother,
the mother, and the father of the man
at the front, that lin one case lieu
had nothing but bareback and bacon
since he has been before Santiago. "
defy you to produce the letter contain
ing this statement, and if you do,
will prove the statement to be an un-
mitigated falsehood and hold the officer
responsible. The proper criticism of
an officer does not Justify faisehoods of
whole cloth.
My anger and indignation is (sic)
because of the distress wantonly(in my
opinion solely for notoriety for your
self )given by you to relatives of soldiers
at the front, and your contemplate effort
to take away the regulations of men the
latchets of whose shoes you are not fit
to tie. Charles p. Eagan,
Commissary- General of Subsisten &c.
This letter. written as long ago as
July, shows clearly what Eagan's ordi-
nary mental habit is. There was u
very good idea in the army as to what
his manners were, and what was the
character of his associates, long before
he began to display his capacity as u
commissary, for he was tried and con
yicted by court-martial for gambling,
rs well as for not paying a gambling
debt of 5000, at Prescott, in Arizona,
as long ago as 1873 He was not dis
missed from the service, but simply
sentenced to be reprimanded in general
orders, and the commanding officer,
Gen. Kautz, in confirming it, spoke in
severe terms of the lightness of the
sentence. We can easily guess the kind
of associates an officer had, who was
tried for gambling and not paying his
gambling debts in Arizona 20 years
ago, The moral decline did not begin
with the supply of canned beef to the
army in the Spanish war. So that the
momentary irritation theory must not
mako. it's appearance again in support
of the ''pull." The paper read to
tho commission about Gen. Miles was,
we see, tho mans usual mode of deal
| ing with hostile critics.