Let Congress look at this.
We understand that several thousand newly arrived soldiers spent their first night in
Richmond on the
Capital Square, Thursday night, with the rain pouring down Incessantly, and nothing to shelter them from the drenching flood.
Let Congress look into such things as this, and ask, in the name of God and humanity, how long shall such things be permitted?
Or, if God and humanity have no claims, then, in the name of our own interests, is our stock of soldiers so unexhaustible that we can afford to murder them ourselves by hundreds and thousands, before they see the face of an enemy?
We, ourselves, saws poor soldier, on Thursday, a fine, intrepid looking fellow, with one leg amputated near the thigh, and the leg still so swollen that the stump had to be supported by a bandages, and in this condition, with the stump of the limb protruding, supported by his crutches this faithful and suffering man was forced to hobble along from his hospital, at the lower end of Main street, to go before the
Medical Board, between 9th and 10th streets, a long and laborious walk for a man with all his limbs, to see whether he was entitled to a discharge!
In the name of common sense, and common civilization — we will not any common humanity, for we sometimes think that humanity has left the world — why could not the resident surgeon at the hospital where that maimed hero lives, be empowered to act himself, without sending him on such an errand ?
If Congress devotes its whole time to the welfare of the
Private soldiers, its time will not be misspent.
They are often treated like dogs, and yet they deserve more of their country than then sands and tens of thousands of incompetent and bedizened officials, whose spangles and epaulets gleam over a mass of heartlessness and corruption, like "rotten mackerel glittering in the moonlight.
