Disaffection among the Federal troops.
--The following statement is from the
Baltimore South, of the 20th inst:
‘
This morning we were visited by three members of
Col. Schwarzwaelder's Fifth New York Regiment, (
German,) who are stationed at the
Capitol in
Washington.
They state that they were called upon in New York by their commander, and urged to volunteer for thirty days, for the defence of the
Capital, being assured of good pay and a
bonus of $20, each, and that their families should be well provided for in their absence.
Arriving at
Annapolis, they were stationed as a guard on the road to
Washington, where for ten days they subsisted almost entirely on crackers, and since their arrival in
Washington they have suffered much from the short allowance and bad quality of their provisions.
The whole regiment, to a great extent, are bordering on a state of mutiny, and are only held in check by the threats of punishment on the part of the officers.
The thirty days for which they enlisted expired yesterday, and on Saturday they were paraded to be sworn in for three months
or more, as the
Government might need their services, when one hundred and fifty refused to take the oath.
These were set upon by the others, by order of the officers, and stripped of their uniforms, which were their private property, and very roughly treated.
To save themselves from such outrage, all except twenty-five, among whom were several officers, consented to take the oath.
Those who refused were violently driven from the camp, almost naked — not a cent paid them for their services, and having spent all the money they had in staving off starvation they were compelled to beg bread and clothing, and started on foot for this city on their way home, and they promise that no more of their German friends shall.
like them, be enlisted in support of
Lincoln through such deception.
One of those who called upon us appeared to be quite an intelligent, respectable man, a physician, and assured us that great dissatisfaction exists amongst all the troops in
Washington, and that it requires the greatest watchfulness to prevent their desertion in large bodies, while an order for them to leave
Washington to march South would probably lead to an open mutiny.
’
