MEADE LETTERS (for LJ)

[MajGenl.Meade]

FREE SOLDIERS AND THE NEGRO


To Mrs. George G. Meade

MATAMORAS, June 12, 1846.

Since the date of my last letter but little has occurred worthy of remark, and I have time to reflect upon the country and peoples with which I have recently become acquainted. The Mexicans are much as anticipated. Though claiming origin from a country wherein a most superior sort of person may be born, they are a very different race from the hardy mountaineers of Spain. Their mixture with the Indian and negro race, render them listless, destitute of the energy necessary for any useful employment. I have not much to say of Indians for these are well content to maintain distance from our pickets and vedettes. There is a large number of negroes around this place, of which a surprising proportion are desirous of being recruited to our 2,000 volunteers, which is quite impossible.

The latter had hardly been on the ground three days before the men began to mutiny at their legitimate duty. Gentlemen from Louisiana, owning plantations and negroes, came here as common soldiers, and then revolt at the idea of drawing their own water and cutting their own wood. They would make use of the natural ability of negroes as servants, but declare that to permit such to wear a uniform would be inimical to good order.

I have learned that ignorant and shiftless people taken from the practices of their usual life and given license by the government to wear uniforms and bear arms are not to be trusted. Every day complaints are made, of this man's cornfield being destroyed, or another man's fences being torn down for firewood, or an outrage committed on some inoffensive person, by drunken volunteers, and above all, those from Texas are the most outrageous

I met a young German, Count Blucher, the nephew of the old Field Marshal, who expressed the greatest disgust for Texas due to the people we are obliged to associate with. He describes Texans as having all the bad traits of the Spanish and Italian banditti, without their amenity of manners and partial refinement. I fancy his account is very nearly true, and they constitute about the very worst specimen of our population.

Such persons, whether unschooled Texans or refined Louisianans, should not hold negroes in any form of servitude, and must learn, sooner or later, to perform their own labor. Soldiering is no play, and those who undertake it must make up their minds to hard times and hard knocks.

To-day a number of the officers of the army, got up a dinner in town, and you may be assured it was a most jolly time. A great quantity of wine was imbibed and an infinite amount of patriotism resulted, besides the most gracious and insincere compliments of Volunteers to Regulars and Regulars to Volunteers, etc., etc.

[Lord Jim]

[MajGenl.Meade]

EXSHELLSIOR

To Mrs. George G. Meade:

CAMP PIERPONT, VA., November 24, 1861.

To-day has been raw and disagreeable; this afternoon we had a slight spit of snow. The men are good material, and with good officers might readily be moulded into soldiers; but the officers, as a rule, are ignorant, inefficient and worthless. We have been weeding out some of the worst.

Our troubles in McCall’s division are however but slight when compared to those of the so-called Excelsior regiments under Hooker at Liverpool Point. The principle difficulty is the number of lawsuits filed against their own general D. E. Sickles by disgruntled officers and men who allege that he lied in order to engage their loyalty and services. Writs of habeas corpus are flying “ever higher” than anything that the enemy has yet launched.

Sickles is a person with whom one would hope never to have intercourse. He murdered the son of Francis Scott Key outside the White House and then prevailed upon Stanton, the same that became our attorney general, to plead mitigation on grounds of temporary insanity.

There appears nothing temporary about it as he was and remains a New York democrat. May God never allow such a creature to enter the White House as president, nor yet as vice president for fear of the next assassination.

Heintzelman has circulated privately a most amusing anecdote regarding Sickles which I ask you to hold in strict confidence. It appears that in order to impress his young wife, Sickles reported that he had been slightly struck by a shell fragment. She repaired immediately to Washington city and eventually found him quite unhurt and in his usual place at the oyster bar at Willards where shell fragments are a common hazard.

Unfortunately for him this came to the notice of Hooker who could distinctly recall ordering Sickles to guard the left flank some distance away from any hostelry. You may be certain Sickles will better obey orders in future and maintain his proper place should he survive both mollusks and lawyers.

I had a visit to-day from Mr. Henry, of the Topographical Bureau, who says he saw the review on Wednesday and thought our division looked and marched the best of all. I have always been excessively fond of Mr. Henry.

[dales]

The men are good material, and with good officers might readily be moulded into soldiers; but the officers, as a rule, are ignorant, inefficient and worthless. We have been weeding out some of the worst.

Fast forward 145 years and we still have the same problems with men [and women] with modern weaponry to boot! God save us!

There appears nothing temporary about it as he was and remains a New York democrat. May God never allow such a creature to enter the White House as president, nor yet as vice president for fear of the next assassination.


LOL!