Larry Purtell
Little Meadows, PA, USA
Posts: 719
 | | The Treatment of the Union Soldiers. | | Posted on: 7/16/2010 9:41:57 AM |
The Treatment of the Union Soldiers by the People of Gettysburgh.
Published: July 24, 1863
FEEDERICK, Md., Tuesday, July 21, 1863.
Your correspondent has been favored with a copy of a communication addressed to the editor of the TIMES, through the Gettysburgh Star, signed by some twenty clerical and professional gentlemen, (not residents of Gettysburgh,) who devote a column, and a half in reply to some strictures I made not long since upon the unpatriotic and illiberal conduct of many citizens of Gettysburgh and vicinity during the presence of the National army.
The names of these reverend gentlemen were sought for, I suppose, to give additional weight to the reply. A considerable portion of the document is composed of ungentlemanly personal insinuations, which would come with a better grace from the throats of the Copperhead mobites of your City than, from throats encircled by white neck-cloths. With these personalities, however, neither the public nor the TIMES have anything to do, and I pass them over.
The main point in the whole matter is that not a material fact of my statement is successfully controverted. Great stress is laid upon the fact that the houses of Gettysburgh are (or were) full of wounded. I knew that before I left. I helped fill a number of them. But we were obliged to do, in most cases, as we do in Virginia -- appropriate the nearest and best buildings without asking any questions, and though there were places where they asked our wounded to come, yet I was so unfortunate as not to become cognizant of more than one or two of them.
I purposely withheld three-fourths of the accounts of shameful conduct which came to my ears, and I will scarcely multiply them here. I will refer these critical clergymen to such officers as Maj.-Gen. BUTTERFIELD, Maj.-Gen. SLOCUM, Maj.-Gen. PLEASANTON Brig.-Gen. WARD, Col. BREWSTER, and hundreds of other officers of equal and less rank, whose experiences were far more unpleasant than mine.
Undoubtedly many of the citizens of Gettysburgh and vicinity are patriotic and generous, but they had a very queer manner of showing it. When two soldiers who died from wounds in one of the churches were buried, the citizens who did it brought in a bill to the surgeons for $10 and when the dead horses in the streets became a stench in the nostrils of even the citizens of Gettysburgh, they asked for a detail of soldiers to remove them, instead of removing the nuisance themselves! And before the blood of the heroic men shed among the batteries in the cemetery was fairly dry upon the ground, a bill of seventeen hundred dollars damages was presented for payment! Call you this "intelligence and rennement?"
Nobody doubts that, since the battle, the people of Gettysburg have been tender and kind to our wounded. But so are our bitterest enemies in Virginia. Nobody doubts, since they have been taught how, that the people of Adams County are doing all that their illiberal definition of the term "patriotism" will allow. No one doubts but they have suffered at the hands of both armies. But what are their brief sufferings, what pang of Pain can they endure, what sacrifices can they make, of which their gallant deliverers are not worthy? The Army of the Potomac had a right to expect a more enthusiastic greeting in loyal Pennsylvania than in rebel Virginia, and yet there were fewer national banners displayed in Gettysburgh, when our troops finally entered the place as victors, than there have been on the route of many a cavalry gallopade through the heart of Virginia.
Our officers and soldiers all had plenty of money. They bought freely everything eatable that was to be had, but that was no reason for extorting from them prices sufficient to comp[???]sale for the losses inflicted by the enemy.
I mean to do no man nor community injustice. If there is a man or woman in Gettysburgh or Adams County who did their whole duty in that trying crisis, they may consider themselves as outside of this controversy, and they will receive the thanks of every generous and patriotic heart. But it will take the statements of even more than twenty clergymen to cradicate the experiences and the undeniable facts which came to my knowledge in Gettysburgh. When the Army of the Potomac votes the citizens of Gettysburgh as gallant, generous and patriotic, then I Shall believe it. Not before. L.L. CROUNSE.
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"My goal is to live forever. So far, so good.
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