fore, that our men be protected from any further injustice and barbarity. You may furnish a copy of this letter. Very respectfully, JOHN BROUGH.” “EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, Columbus, January 5, 1865.

"SURGEON C. S. TRIPLER, Medical Director, Cincinnati, Ohio: "SIR: I am under obligations for the transfer of one hundred Ohio men from that pest-house called a hospital at Madison, to points where, I hope, they will be properly fed and decently treated.

"I respectfully request that the rest of the Ohio soldiers at that point be transferred at the earliest possible moment, and that no more Ohio soldiers be sent to that hospital while it is under the control of Surgeon Grant. If your own reputation as Medical Director of this department does not require a change in the management of that hospital, my duty as Governor of the State is to protect our soldiers, as far as practicable, from the brutal treatment they have received there. If I can not accomplish this through your department, I must attempt it elsewhere. I regret much to be compelled to assume this position.

"It is three weeks since I called your attention to this matter. The complaints accum late on me every day—and I know them to be well founded. I can not permit the wrong to continue, if I can possibly reach it. If I have failed through you, where I have desired to work in harmony, I must try it otherwise, even if it be against your views and wishes.

The storm thus raised about the cars of the authorities soon produced a change. An investigation ordered by Governor Morton, of Indiana, resulted in a report that the food furnished had been insufficient and of inferior quality, but that it was now greatly improved. The surgeon in charge resigned. But the Medical Director sought to break the force of the charges, whereupon the Governor responded with a terse exhibit of the process of "medical investigations into alleged mismanagement of hospitals."

"SURGEON C. S. TRIPLER, Cincinnati, Ohio:

"COULMBUS, January 14, 1865.

"SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge your favor of the 9th instant. I do not propose to review its suggestions in regard to Madison Hospital, as I am advised by Surgeon Wood that Surgeon Grant has resigned, to take effect 31st instant. In this act Surgeon Grant has been wiser than his friends. Notwithstanding the whitewashing of a Government inspection, he knows that the special inspection made by Governor Morton, in response to the demands of the Madison people, more than confirmed the report made to me, and that his dismissal was a matter of certainty. His departure from the scene of his petty tyranny and abuse of brave men will unloose tongues that have been tied by fear of him; and if you will take the trouble, next month, to go beyond head-quarters into the wards, you will find that the actions of Governor Morton and myself have been more than justifiable.

"I am very well satisfied that Surgeon Grant has voluntarily retired. What is past can not be recalled. The present and future only can be improved. If abuses can be remedied without unnecessary publicity, perhaps it is as well-for if the wrongs done at that hospital were disclosed to the public, it would shake their confidence in our whole hospital management. As it is, there is enough promulgated to severely damage the reputation of officers to whom that management is intrusted.

"I know nothing of the inspector.sent to Madison. He may merit all the encomiums you bestow upon him, but you will allow me, in kindness, to make some suggestions in regard to these inspections:

"1. Inspectors are generally in full sympathy with surgeons in charge. Both classes adopt the theory that men in hospitals are a set of grumblers and fault-finders, whose complaints are to be disregarded.

"This assumption has done infinite wrong, and in many cases covered gross frauds. As a general thing, the assumption is false and wicked.

"2. The inspection rarely goes beyond head-quarters. Full of this false theory, he takes the statements of the surgeon in charge, as he eats his dinner, and justifies it by his theory as he

praises the wines. If he does go beyond, it is after he has received his impressions from the head.

"The assistants understand the bonds of sympathy-they know they are at the mercy of both parties, and they close their lips or evasively approve.

"3. The abused private is not consulted in the matter; or if called up, it is in the presence of interested superiors, who, he knows, will punish him, or ‘send him to the front, if he died by the way.' He is, of course, silent.

“4. Upon this character of investigation, the inspector goes forth and makes his report.

"The sore is healed over-the wrong goes on, and our men are further mistreated and abused. I speak of that which I know. I have narrowly watched this thing, and the cases at Dennison and Madison fully justify my position. It is in full proof that at the latter place the correspondence of the men was interrupted, their letters opened and read, and the writers punished for daring to complain. I do not say there were no false charges made, and that there are no grumblers. I know that to be so; but it is not a safe theory upon which to judge all complaints.

"When a whole hospital complains, there is some cause for it. As Medical Director you are the umpire. As such you should receive all the facts and judge of them fairly. The Government and the men alike look to you for this course.

"I do not intend to impeach your motives or your official course, but I want to show you that in the large majority of cases, when you hear the inspector, take all he says for granted, and close the case upon his report, you are acting exparte, for you have only the statement of the surgeon in charge, be he incompetent or corrupt. If you follow this course, if you hold all the presumptions in favor of the surgeon and against the men, if you encourage the theory that all complaints are false, because a few are so, if you investigate in the interests of the surgeon instead of against him, you will fail in the great commission that is given to you, and very soon forfeit the high reputation you brought into this department. The sympathies of the Western authorities are with the men who have fought their battles.

"While we are ready to approve all good and competent surgeons in charge of our hospitals, we do not approve them until we know their worth. We are jealous of them until they have won our confidence, and we have no mercy for either the incompetent or corrupt. Our men are objects of our care, and we will not see them wronged. In this we want your sympathy and your aid. We want you to realize our position and work with us. In a word, we ask you to join us in the adjuration to 'doubt all things, prove all things, and hold fast to things which are good.' I have no other purpose myself, no enemies to punish, no surgeons to promote. I want the right for my soldiers, and that I will contend for against all opposition.

"Very truly yours,

JOHN BROUGH."*

That this was all just we can not affirm. That it was error on the safe side, if at all, is patent; and the soldiers, who rarely heard of these efforts during his life, and will see his strong words in their favor now for the first time, as they find them here copied from the archives of the State, will learn at last to appreciate the warmth of the zeal in their service which he never cared to trumpet to the world, and which he, nevertheless, made so searching and so effectual for good.

In his dealings with other hospitals, Governor Brough generally kept two main points in view. He strove to have Ohio soldiers transferred, as rapidly as possible to hospitals within the State. And, when Ohio soldiers in transitu needed medical assistance, he demanded such arrangements as would insure it without the tedious delay sometimes involved in awaiting an order from a medical director.

* Justice to Surgeon Tripler requires it to be added that he denied the charge of insufficient food furnished to convalescents, and attributed it to the craving appetite always felt by that class of patients, which wise physicians, in hospitals or in family practice, were always compelled to restrain-to the great dissatisfaction of the patients themselves.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE LAST RECRUITING-ITS PROGRESS AND PERILS.

W

E have seen in the previous administration the beginnings of the vicious system by which the work of recruiting was poisoned-the system which, when the genuine impulse of volunteering had measurably disappeared, sought by bribery, in the shape of bounties, to secure a sickly counterfeit of it, rather than resort to the honest and impartial draft. We have now to see how the work thus grew more and more difficult, and the drafts it had been sought to shun grew nevertheless the more frequent, till the clear vision of the Governor of the State was able to perceive nothing less than ruin in the near future.

The re enlistment of the veterans, and the recruiting near the close of Governor Tod's administration, left the State ahead of her quotas under all the calls. But in February, 1864, came a fresh call from the President, under which the quota of Ohio was fifty-one thousand four hundred and sixty-five men. In March came another call, adding twenty thousand five hundred and ninety-five to the quota; in July, another adding fifty thousand seven hundred and ninetytwo more; and in December another, under which the final quota of the State was twenty-six thousand and twenty-seven.

The method pursued in raising these required troops was uniform-save in its progressive tendency from bad to worse. Very much against the wishes of Governor Brough, there was left no plan save to offer high and higher bounties. Government, State, county, township bounties, hundreds piled on fresh hundreds of dollars, till it had come to such a pass that a community often paid in one form or another near a thousand dollars for every soldier it presented to the mustering officers, and double as much for every one it succeeded in getting into the wasted ranks at the front. Saying nothing of the desertion, the bountyjumping, the substitute brokerage thus stimulated, we have only to add that all this extravagance failed in its main purpose-it too rarely got the respective localities "out of the draft." Out of the four calls made upon Brough's administration, which we have enumerated, the second was made before the preceding one had been filled, and for three of them, as many as several drafts were ordered. It was found that the State had not received proper credits for her previous contributions, and a reduction of over twenty thousand was secured in the assigned quotas. Even with this aid seven thousand seven hundred and eleven men had to be drafted in May, out of whom the Government-so ineffectual had the whole system become-received one thousand four hundred and twenty-one

soldiers, and commutation money for the rest. In September a draft for nine thousand and six was ordered, under which, thanks to the excess of credits in patriotic localities that had already more than filled their quotas, the State obtained a small credit to carry over to the final call. Under this also a little drafting was done in backward localities.

Eleven new regiments were organized in 1864, running from the One Hundred and Seventy-Third to the One Hundred and Eighty-Third, and some fifteen companies were divided among others; while a considerable number of the old regiments, being wasted below the minimum allowed by the department, were either consolidated or reduced to battalions. Early in 1865, under the inspiring aspect of affairs, the new regiments required were rapidly raised and sent to the field; the One Hundred and Eighty-Fourth as soon as the 22d of February, and the last of them, the One Hundred and Ninety-Seventh by the 15th of April. Officers for the new regiments were sought almost exclusively from the meritorious officers of Ohio troops then at the front-two years' active service being held an indispensable prerequisite.

How well or ill each county in the State stood at the close may be gathered from the following table. Here may be seen what counties lagged behind, what ones resorted to the draft, what ones kept up the patriotic impulse to the last and stood ahead of all their quotas, when Appomattox C. H. ended the struggle and sounded the recall:

105

Clark...

Montgomery

598

534

Morgan...

Morrow

ཚོ་དང་ཆ==་དབ ོE7༄==5.➢£-i£-»སྤུ་

45

6

213

114

125

20

Jackson.

119

13

112

7

Wayne.....

327

279

Jeflersou

46

Knox

16

On the 23d of August, 1864, the people of the State were startled by a proclamation appealing to them not to offer organized resistance to the draft then impending. The language of the Governor was conciliatory, and he made few disclosures as to any secret knowledge of the danger which he professed to apprehend. After reciting the facts connected with the order for a draft, he mentioned a fear of organized opposition to it, explained the punishments for conspiracy against the Government, and continued:

"Most earnestly do I appeal to the people of the State not to engage in this forcible resistance to the laws, which evil counsellors and bad men are leading them. It can not, and will not, succeed. Its triumph, if it achieve any, must be of a mere temporary character. The Government is not weak. It is strong and powerful. It can not, and it will not, permit an armed insurrection to impeach its strength, or impair its power, while contending with the Southern rebellion. I do not say this to you in any spirit of intimidation, or in any threatening tone. I speak it to you as a warning, and with an imploring voice to hear and heed it. I know what the determination of your Government is, and I fully comprehend the power at hand to enforce it.

"What can you, who contemplate armed resistance, reasonably expect to gain by such a movement? You can not effectually or permanently prevent the enforcement of the laws. You can not in anywise improve your own condition in the present, and must seriously injure it in the future. Judicious and conservative men, who look to the supreminacy of Government for the protection and safety of their persons and property, will not sympathize or co-operate with you. You may commit crime; you may shed blood; you may destroy property; you may spread ruin and devastation over some localities of the State; you may give aid and comfort for a season to the Rebels already in arms against the country; you may transfer, for a brief time, the horrors of war from the fields of the South to those of the State of Ohio; you may paralyze prosperity, and create consternation and alarm among our people. This is a bare possibility, but it is all you can hope to accomplish; for you have looked upon the progress of our present struggle to little purpose, if you have not learned the great recuperative power, and the deep earnestness of the country in this contest. The final result will not be doubtful; the disaster to you will be complete, and the penalty will equal the enormity of the crime.

"From the commencement of this rebellion the State of Ohio has maintained a firm and inflexible position which can not now be abandoned. In this internal danger that now threatens us, I call upon all good citizens to assert and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and laws of the land. These constitute the great elements of our strength as a nation, and they are the bulwarks of our people. Hold in subjection by persuasion and peaceable means, if you can, all attempts at civil insurrection, or armed resistance to the laws. Failing in this, there is another duty as citizens from which we may not shrink, and to which I earnestly hope we may not be enforced. To those who threaten us with this evil, I say, we do not use any threats in return-there is no desire to provoke passion, or create further irritation. Such men are earnestly and solemnly invoked to abandon their evil purposes; but at the same time they are warned that this invocation is not prompted by any apprehension of the weakness of the Government, or the success of the attempts to destroy it. I would avert, by all proper means, the occurrence of civil war in the State; but if it must come, the consequences be with those who precipitate it upon us, "JOHN BROUGH."

We now know that it was the discovery of the "Order of American Knights" or "Sons of Liberty," and the knowledge of the extent of their plans, which prompted these precautions. His Private Secretary has since. explained the circumstances: "Governor Brough received his first intimation. of what was being done by that secret organization in the State of Ohio from Major-General Rosecrans, whose watchfulness was very extraordinary.

The

* Hon. Wm. Henry Smith, subsequently Secretary of State. The extract above given is from a private letter to the author.