Appeal of the Executive Finance Committee in the city of New York.

Date:
[1861]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Appeal of the Executive Finance Committee in the city of New York. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    ment and immediate action. The general impression, however, which my visit to Camp Dennison, near Cincinnati, Camp McClellan, at Cairo, Camp Pope, at Alton, and other smaller collections of Western troops made upon me, I do earnestly desire at once to communicate. A nobler, manlier, a more intelligent, earnest, and valuable body of troops was never gathered on the earth's surface, than the £0,000 men I saw in these camps! They are fully equal to the best of our Eastern troops in clothing and equip- ments, and better than that, their equals in moral force, and directness and seriousness of purpose. I have visited them in their tents and barracks, hastily of course; seen them in the ranks, witnessed their evolutions, and marked their drill ; messed with the men and with their ofiicers; con- versed freely with hundreds in the hospitals, which now, all told, hold perhaps near a thousand of the 20,000, who are more or less seriously ill ;—but sick or well, in camp or on parade, I have seen only one spirit—a profound love of country, a solemn sense of the necessity of this war, a willingness to die in de- fence of the sacred interests at stake, with a most assured sense that God was behind and victory before them ! Since the ear- liest and best days of the War of the Reformation, no such spirit has stirred soldiers in the field, as that which now anim- ates our troops. Nor were so many priceless lives ever so freely offered for an end so devotedly hold to be worth all it can cost. The perils of the actual battlefield are nothing to such men ; the injury their open enemies can do them, almost not worth thinking of;—but will malaria, fever, pestilence—irrational and viewless enemies—be as little dangerous? No! It is before these inglorious but deadly foes, that our brave boys will flinch, before their unseen weapons that they will fall ! Their generous and self-devoted officers are like!)' to be the first to suffer. They share the hardships, they more than share the labor and